Dr Qi Zhang - Biography

Dr Qi Zhang is investigating the fundamental processes by which our cells turn genes on and off as they change identities, for example as stem cells develop into mature cell types. She hopes to learn how these processes can break down and lead to cancer and other diseases. Her work has the potential to open up opportunities for new kinds of drugs for cancer and developmental diseases.

Dr Zhang is a team leader at the South Australian immunoGENomics Cancer Institute (SAiGENCI), University of Adelaide.

The genes in our cells are packaged as chromatin, a highly organised and condensed structure made up of DNA and packaging proteins called histones. Chemical modifications to the DNA and these proteins, known as epigenetic modifications, affect how genes are expressed and hence control cell identity and behaviour.

Dr Zhang is investigating the epigenetic processes that turn genes on and turn off to influence the development of individual cells for good and for bad.

“We want to know what’s happening in a healthy cell,” she says. “Then we want to know what is going wrong in a cancer cell – when it loses its identity.”

Most cancers are caused by changes to our DNA sequence. However, this is not the only factor driving cancer development – epigenetic misregulation also controls how cancers arise and respond to treatments. There are drugs that tackle these epigenetic causes of cancer but they have significant side effects.

Using the CSL Centenary Fellowship, Dr Zhang hopes to generate fundamental knowledge that researchers around the world can use to develop new drugs to tackle epigenetic misregulation in cancers.

She plans to investigate the mode of action of certain protein complexes that influence the future development of cells. These complexes are essential epigenetic regulators in development, and accordingly aberrant activities of these protein complexes are associated with human diseases. Little is known about the detailed operation of these complexes, other than that their action varies in different cell types. So, drugs targeting these complexes have, to date, been relatively unsuccessful.

Dr Zhang has already developed technologies to study these protein complexes. It’s complex work which will build on her team’s expertise in cell biology, protein biochemistry and structural biology. She will use tools including genomics, AI and cryo-electron microscopy in her investigations.

Dr Zhang recalls her excitement when reading about the human genome project on a poster at high school. After a bachelor degree in Chinese traditional medicine, she turned to a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology at China Agricultural University. That was followed by a post-doctoral fellowship studying gene regulation at the University of Toronto. She moved to Monash University in 2016 where she held an ARC DECRA Fellowship.

Dr Zhang moved to Adelaide in 2023, where she is an NHMRC Investigator and a European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) Australia group leader at SAiGENCI. EMBL Australia supports ambitious projects and provides access to, and support from, EMBL, Europe’s flagship life sciences institution.