General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that if our country wants to be at the forefront of the world in scientific and technological innovation, it must discover talents in innovative practices, cultivate talents in innovative activities, and gather talents in innovative undertakings. It must vigorously cultivate innovative scientific and technological talents with large scale, reasonable structure, and excellent quality. We must put the development of human resources as the top priority in scientific and technological innovation, reform the mechanisms for talent training, introduction, and use, strive to create a group of world-class scientists, scientific and technological leaders, engineers, and high-level innovation teams, and focus on cultivating front-line innovative talents and young scientific and technological talents.

Jinfeng Laboratory has always adhered to the concept of "talents are the first resource", targeted talents according to tasks, allocated functional resources in a matrix model, carried out organized scientific research, and organized interdisciplinary, cross-regional and cross-field scientific and technological talents based on the scientific research task list to carry out "large corps" operations and integrated research, and strive to accelerate original theoretical innovation in the field of precision diagnosis and basic theoretical breakthroughs in "stuck neck" technologies.

Currently, the laboratory has a total of 40 scientific research teams and 401 scientific researchers, including 5 academician teams and 33 national-level talents.

"Guangming Daily"

NEWS

On February 25, the talent section of "Guangming Daily" reported a full-page report on "Jinfeng Laboratory's Developmental Origins of Brain Disease Research Team: Exploring the Source of Disease to Protect Public Health", which demonstrated the effectiveness of Jinfeng Laboratory's insistence on scientific and technological innovation and institutional innovation, and strengthening the construction of basic research talent teams.

The original text is as follows

Jinfeng Laboratory’s research team on the developmental origins of brain diseases:

Explore the source of disease and protect people’s health

A new journey to strengthen the country through talents

Glioma is the most common primary intracranial malignant tumor, with an annual incidence rate of 3 to 8 per 100,000 people. Its 5-year mortality rate is second only to pancreatic cancer and lung cancer. How does malignant glioma arise? This has always been a scientific problem. For a long time, the medical community has been unable to find a clear cause of glioma and has been unable to prescribe the right treatment, resulting in the average survival time of patients being only 15 months.
In 2022, the Jinfeng Laboratory's research team on the developmental origins of brain diseases published original research results in Nature, proposing and confirming for the first time that olfactory perception can directly regulate the occurrence of malignant gliomas by activating the activity of corresponding functional neural circuits, providing new ideas and targets for the clinical diagnosis and treatment of gliomas. Now, the team is working to find the relevant factors that promote the growth of brain glioma, and explore how to block the release of this factor in the brain to form prevention and treatment methods for glioma.

Team leader Liu Chong (front row) guides students in preparing tissue sections.

Adhere to the concept of "preventing disease with superior medicine"

“Activate olfactory-related nerve cells in mice and continue to observe the impact on tumor cells..." Just after the Spring Festival, the cool breeze was still blowing by Fengqi Lake in the Western (Chongqing) Science City, while the Jinfeng Laboratory nearby was already in full swing. Liu Chong, head of the research team on the developmental origins of brain diseases at Jinfeng Laboratory, led his team members to stare at the computer screen and watch the process of nerve cells releasing key factors that promote the growth of tumor cells.
“We activated the olfactory nerve activity of mice through chemical genetic means, recorded the behavioral changes of cells with a two-photon microscope, observed the release of signaling factors by nerve cells, and repeatedly compared the effects of different signaling factors on tumor cells. ”Liu Chong told reporters. Liu Chong has led the team to conduct explorations like this for 15 years. “When I first returned to China, domestic experimental facilities were not that complete and scientific research funds were scarce. Modeling brain glioma was more difficult than modeling other cancers such as lung cancer. I also thought about giving up. ”Liu Chong said that he firmly believed in the traditional Chinese medicine concept of "preventing disease with superior medicine" and believed that it was important to explore the source of disease and prevent the occurrence of disease, so he finally chose to stick to it. “As tumor cells grow, they communicate and transmit information with other cells around them. Nerve cells are the basic functional units of the brain and function through neuronal firing. Therefore, we focused on nerve cell activity to explore whether it affects the development of glioma. ”Liu Chong said. The path of inquiry is not easy. To unravel the relationship between environmental stimuli and the development of glioma, the first challenge is to construct an experimental mouse model that can spontaneously develop glioma. The team spent several years building a reliable animal model that simulates the development of glioma in the human brain. Through a long period of rigorous analysis, the team found that tumors mainly arise spontaneously in the synaptic glomerular layer of the olfactory bulb, which is the information exchange area between the first-level neurons (olfactory receptor neurons) and the second-level neurons (mitral/tufted cells) of the olfactory circuit. Therefore, the team used cutting-edge chemical genetic intervention methods to precisely inhibit the activity of olfactory receptor neurons in mice. They found that inhibiting the activity of olfactory receptor neurons significantly reduced tumor volume. ； When its activity is activated, tumor volume increases. The results confirmed that the excitatory activity of olfactory circuit neurons is the root cause of glioma. “This study is the first to intervene in spontaneous glioma formation through physical means, and also verifies the role of the olfactory nerve circuit in glioma formation. ”Liu Chong said.

Team members are conducting experiments.

Multidisciplinary collision breaks through research dilemmas

“From a neurobiological perspective, this experiment continuously stimulates nerve cells, thereby generating data on how neural activity regulates tumor cells. ”“The addition of artificial intelligence can make data more accurate and experiments more efficient. ”……The in-depth discussion of brain glioma itself is a multidisciplinary medical topic. Team member Dr. Liu Rui told reporters that the team's research is not limited to a single discipline. Therefore, at each discussion meeting, team members are more likely to spark ideas and generate new research directions and solutions based on their thinking and discussions in their respective professional fields.
During the research process, in order to further verify that external olfactory input can directly affect the occurrence of glioma, team members fell into a dilemma: how to accurately control the olfactory nerve activity of mice? If we follow the traditional method of using anesthetics and other drugs for neurological or biological anesthesia through biological methods, it will easily interfere with various nerves in mice, resulting in inaccurate experimental data. While everyone was worrying about it, a team member with an engineering background asked if they could try to intervene in the mice's olfactory perception through physical means. So the team made a bold attempt and designed an ingenious experiment, inserting a small silicone plug into one side of the mouse's nasal cavity to directly deprive unilateral olfactory input. Surprisingly, this simple physical olfactory intervention can significantly inhibit the occurrence and development of tumors in the ipsilateral olfactory bulb. “We used chemical genetics and physical methods to finally prove that olfactory perception can regulate the occurrence of glioma. ”Liu Rui said. It is with this kind of interdisciplinary collaboration that the team can continue to explore more interdisciplinary topics. Today, Jinfeng Laboratory has introduced talents from many fields such as pharmacy, medicine, life sciences, and materials science. The team members cover multiple research directions such as tumor neurobiology, neurodevelopmental biology, disease animal models, and the basics and clinical translation of neurological diseases.

Collaborate to produce more results

Jinfeng Laboratory is a major exploration in Chongqing to build a laboratory system with regional characteristics. Currently, Jinfeng Laboratory has established and put into operation 8 high-level scientific research platforms, including the Jinfeng·BGI Center for Spatiotemporalomics, Experimental Animal Center, and Nanosynthesis Platform, and has 40 scientific research teams stationed there, providing a steady stream of strong impetus for scientific research and innovation.
“Scientific research has never been done alone, but by gathering a large number of talents to open up scientific research ideas and continuously promote the growth of young talents. ”said team member Dr. Yang Yantong. Yang Yantong remembered that when he first joined the team, he knew little about cancer research, so Liu Chong customized a new research direction for Yang Yantong to understand and study brain glioma from a new perspective. The young student gradually grew into one of the backbone of the team. Now, with the efforts of Yang Yantong, the interaction mechanism between brain glioma and the neural microenvironment is about to be unveiled. Liu Rui recalled that he was always careless in his initial experiments, forgetting to design strict controlled experiments, and the experimental data collected were not comparable. “Teacher Liu Chong discusses with me every Saturday the details of the week's experiments, analyzes and thinks about the experimental results together, and strictly controls the data processing. After a few years, I was able to help guide the new graduate students who joined the team in designing and conducting experiments. ”Liu Rui said. “When we previously conducted a cross-field experiment on a biological model in the Zhejiang University laboratory, in order to understand changes in the data, we needed to monitor the data 24 hours a day and manually record and compare it at any time. ”Liu Rui said that since this is a brand new experiment and there is no reference before, it can only be observed repeatedly through the stupidest method. Countless repeated operations, the team takes turns to collaborate 24 hours a day. If a mistake is made during this period, it may be interrupted and need to be restarted. Yang Yantong said: "When we communicated with other teams, we found that they could use intelligent modeling when conducting such experiments, so we used their computational brain power to finally complete the experiment and lay a solid foundation for the team's next scientific research direction. ”Liu Chong said that the team's research results provide unlimited space for further exploration into whether different sensory stimuli such as vision, hearing, taste, touch, etc., and even emotional stress and abnormal neurological function-related diseases can also affect tumor occurrence. Basic research is a long process. Today, Liu Chong is leading the team to carry out technology research and development and achievement transformation in the field of biomedicine in response to major national strategic needs. “I will always maintain my original intention and confidence in basic research, continue to delve deeper into the medical field, and produce more scientific research results that can protect the health of the people. ”Liu Chong said.