Stargaze RisingStar Series: Zhenpeng Qin
A mechanical engineer at UT Dallas is reframing how we think about drug design.
It’s no secret that many of the groundbreaking innovations identified in academia fail to reach patients. The journey from the “Aha” moment in the lab, through company formation and an initial fundraise, to clinical trials and beyond, is full of scientific, execution, market, and fundraising risks.
It is the job of “innovation searchers” - our shorthand for the VCs, TTOs, and scouts whose job it is to source innovation - to not only find breakthrough ideas with the potential to become cures, but to predict which are most likely to survive this gauntlet of risks.
Last month, we showed how we are using our proprietary tool Stargaze™ to do exactly this, with a case study on the Mayo Clinic and Exact Sciences. Today, we showcase one of the many early-career rising stars we have identified with Stargaze™ and connected to the Portal network, and why you should be paying more attention to them.
A mechanical engineer venturing deep into biology with a new set of tools
Zhenpeng Qin’s story starts at Jiaotong University in China, where he began his studies in Mechanical engineering before pursuing a master’s in mechanical engineering at the University of Akron in 2009. It wasn’t until he started his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at the University of Minnesota that he was paired with John Bischof as his advisor and began learning the ways of biomedicine.
Qin joined a prolific lineage of mechanical engineers applying mechanical solutions to biological problems. Medical imaging and photonics research were some of the original bridges between mechanical engineering and biology. The invention of the X-ray in the late 19th century exemplifies one of the first fruitful convergences between photonics engineering and biology. Bischof studied under Boris Rubinsky - a mechanical engineer at UC Berkeley - whose research was centered around heat and mass transfer in medical imaging and biotech - specifically low-temperature biology and bioelectronics. Bischof’s research followed this path looking at cryogenic storage and cooling rate responses of human tissue.
The core lessons of Bischof and Rubinsky’s research, which were passed down to Qin, are around heat mass transfer, known in the biomedical space as biotransport. An early iteration of these tools applied to the biomedical space was with thermal contrast amplification which uses laser energy to amplify heat signals on gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) for point-of-care diagnostics - leading to the founding of Vigilant Diagnostics (founded by Bischoff with the help of Qin).
After his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota, Qin broadened his lens of experiences to draw upon, completing a post-doc with Joseph Zasadinzinski exploring chemical engineering and material science. Here he learned about therapeutic delivery systems and local controlled release of therapeutic agents. Qin also collaborated with Warren Chan, a University of Toronto professor, who is an expert in nanoparticle synthesis and photonics.
A new lab with a new mission: an impact that can reach patients
All of these interdisciplinary experiences teed up Qin’s professorship at the University of Texas Dallas in 2015, where he as today. At UT Dallas, he started his own lab to pursue several different AuNP projects for patient applications. Immediately, he focused the energies of his new lab on developing an improved diagnostic - a next-generation point-of-care diagnostic device named DIAMOND (DIgitAl plasMONic nanobubble Detection). This technology employs gold nanoparticles coupled with antibodies recognizing and binding to viral surface proteins for a high-sensitivity, low-cost, diagnostic device.
A second thrust of his lab became the creation of mechanical engineering-inspired therapeutics, utilizing molecular hyperthermia. More common approaches to drugging proteins are inspired by biology and chemistry. Traditional small molecules inhibit proteins. Antibodies bind to them. Gene therapies silence them. Qin’s approach is at once more primordial and, perhaps, more elegant. He burns them. Specifically, his team synthesizes AuNPs to bind to a specific protein of interest and then uses plasmonic heating to inactivate the target protein.
The key to destroying a protein with heat is in getting the “temperature” just right. Too little heating and the protein remains intact. Too much heating and healthy surrounding tissue is destroyed. Qin’s breakthrough - harnessing nanoscale heat confinement - hits the Goldilocks zone; not too hot, not too cold, but just right. His lab has used this technology to successfully inactivate PAR2, a G-protein-coupled receptor implicated in pain and inflammation.
A pipeline built around lessons at the intersection
As his research progressed, Qin began focusing on ways to spin out his research into different startups. Qin founded his first company - Avsana Labs, a point-of-care diagnostic-focused company - right before the Covid-19 pandemic. With the flood of point-of-care diagnostics inspired by the pandemic, differentiation became very difficult in a crowded market. Despite these headwinds, Avsana continues driving forward and has been awarded multiple NIH grants to further its RSV diagnostic to market.
Qin’s more recent efforts in applying his AuNPs for therapeutic delivery have garnered further interest and momentum, with congressional funding via the Department of Defense and interest from the private sector. Expanding further on his molecular hyperthermia research, another research focus that has gained significant traction is using AuNPs to cross biological barriers that often impede therapeutics: the blood-brain barrier, the blood-tumor barrier, and the blood-spinal cord barrier.
In addition to using AuNPs for molecular hyperthermia, AuNPs can also be used to temporarily and reversibly increase the permeability of these barriers by focusing picosecond plasmonic on tight junction proteins. Many current methods, such as ultrasound modulation, have failed due to a lack of precise targeting and safety concerns around intensity, frequency, and duration. The platform that Qin’s lab has developed is called OptoBBB, OptoBBTB, or OptoBSCB for the blood-brain barrier, blood-brain-tumor barrier, and blood-spinal cord barrier respectively.
This Opto-platform has also gained significant interest in the cancer space for its ability to modulate the blood-brain-tumor barrier with funding from the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT). A recent paper published by Qin and his lab evaluated the use of OptoBBTB as a method of increasing therapeutic delivery for glioblastoma. His group loaded their AuNPs with Taxol - an approved chemotherapy drug for various cancer indications, but not glioblastoma due to its inability to cross the BBB. Not only was his group able to show successful therapeutic delivery and efficacy, but they did so on repeated days, reversibly opening up the BBTB for delivery on each day.
A recently submitted paper for peer review from Qin’s lab exemplifies the efficacy of using OptoBSCB for modulating behavior through therapeutic delivery. This is an area where focused ultrasound modulation struggles given ultrasound waves poorly penetrate the bone and soft tissue surrounding the spinal cord, thereby limiting therapeutic efficacy. OptoBSCB’s differentiated value proposition offers a unique window of opportunity to translate and commercialize this technology, bringing new options to patients.
Qin is at the front-end of his “Translational Phase”
Our last post looked at the life of David Ahlquist (Mayo Clinic, Exact Sciences) as a “Scientific Career in Five Acts” and argued that Stargaze™ makes it possible to see these acts play out.
“Like great plays, great scientific careers are all different. But they tend to follow similar patterns. Might the patterns in Ahlquist’s career, made visible by Portal Stargaze™, make it possible to find other researchers like him, before their big moment?” (From: Finding Future David Ahlquists)
Our analysis of Qin’s career makes us think so.
Using Stargaze™, we can see a career trajectory much like David Ahlquist’s taking shape:
Qin set his anchor around a core innovation space (2010 - 2014)
He zeroed in on a topic of inquiry, specifically his own (2015 - 2017)
He has explored several avenues to apply his research, some which succeeded and some which failed (2017 - 2020)
He is now doubling down on his most promising discoveries, specifically two therapeutic applications of his research: 1) destroying proteins with heat, and 2) modulating biological barriers. (2021 - Present)
By our estimation, Qin is now entering the most commercially promising stage in his career. Now, the most exciting question is: “Who will come alongside Qin to create a new generation of cures?”
Zooming out to the bigger picture
Qin exemplifies one angle for how mechanical engineering lessons and innovations are being applied to biomedical problems. How can we identify and reframe setbacks and failures in other areas of science and biomedicine with new lenses to identify innovative solutions? Potential breakthroughs based on lessons in mechanical engineering have been especially common in the drug and gene delivery space - which was the focus of our Stargaze™ project that identified Qin as a rising star. One of the core lessons we learned from this project: if you want to find innovative drug delivery methods, go check out your mechanical engineering department!
Portal Innovation’s core thesis is around serving early-stage life science ecosystems that are overscienced but underfunded. Zhenpeng Qin’s work at UT Dallas exemplifies that. Despite the fact that Texas is still in the budding stages as an innovation ecosystem, Qin has prospered in building out an academic lab full of projects ripe for commercialization. His highly-impressive pipeline of AuNPs presents a vast array of translational technologies to be spun out into startups, moving them closer to reaching patients. As Portal is expanding and opening up space in Houston later this year, look out for future collaborations between Portal and Zhenpeng Qin.
Interested in using Stargaze to scout for innovation? Our innovation astronomers work with corporations, investors, and startups. Email to learn more: steven.lehmann@portalinnovations.com