Affiliation: University of Tsukuba Faculty of Medicine, Japan

Dr. Zheng, a stem cell biologist and a principle investigator, received his PhD of Medical Science at the University of Tsukuba Graduate School of Medicine. From 2003, he has been a team leader for somatic stem cells and pluripotent stem cells as well as for regenerative medicine and therapy. He got his postdoctoral training as a JSPS Fellow (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) and then became an Assistant Professor at Yokohama City University School of Medicine, next served as an Associate Professor at University of Tsukuba Faculty of Medicine. As a Distinguished Medical Experts and a Distinguished Professor, he is collaborating now with his colleagues at Institute of Regenerative Medicine, Jiangsu University, and School of Biotechnology and Health Sciences, Wuyi University, China.

Dr. Zheng is focusing on the isolation of endoderm stem cells as well as liver stem cells in normal and cancer tissues from rodents and human specimens; especially for hepatic primordial development and the microenvironment, and drug development, he is trying to generate chimera rat with humanized liver and blood. Furthermore, for clinical application, he is investigating how to generate the hepatic organoids with multiple cell-cell interactions. He is also interested in cellular reprogramming and expansion of primary human hepatocytes and iPSC-derived hepatic progenitors through small molecules in vitro and in vivo.