Qian Zhang

Qian Zhang is a postdoctoral fellow in the Dr. Abdel-Wahab’s lab at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She developed synthetic introns to selectively targeting U2AF1 mutated myeloid cells. U2AF1 mutations characterize high risk forms of MDS and are also common in elderly patients with AML. She aims to optimize these synthetic introns and develop novel lipid nanoparticles delivery of the synthetic introns into mice. Qian received her Ph.D. training in the Dr. Krainer lab at Cold spring harbor laboratory, where she developed novel RNA therapeutics to target a driver mutation of a deadly pediatric brain tumor known as Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Gliomas. This work was published in Science Translational Medicine with Qian as a first author. She also contributed to the development of innovative RNA therapeutics to modulate RNA splicing in cystic fibrosis. Qian is a key coauthor for these studies that were published in papers in Nucleic Acids Research, PNAS, and Nature Communications.