Faculty

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Zhongwei Li

Associate Professor of Medicine and Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine

Nephrology

1937 Hospital Place Off Campus Los Angeles

Contact

zhongwei.li@med.usc.edu

NIH: NIH Director's New Innovator Award, 2022

University of Southern California: "Heros Among Us" Medal, 2022

School of Life Sciences of Tsinghua University: Representative Alumni Award, 2021

Keck School of Medicine of USC: Dean's Pilot Award, 2019

Wright Foundation: Wright Foundation Pilot Award, 2018

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC): Top 100 Influential Research Articles in China (2012), 2013

Johnson & Johnson: "Johnson & Johnson Asia Outstanding Thesis Award in Bio-tech", 1st Prize, 2012

Ray Wu Memorial Fund: Ray Wu Prize, 2012

City of Beijing: Outstanding Ph.D. Graduate Award, 2012

Tsinghua University: Outstanding Ph.D. Graduate Award, 2012

Tsinghua University: Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis Award, 2012

Sichuan University: Outstanding Undergraduate Award, 2007

Sichuan University: Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award, 2007

Spatially patterned kidney assembloids recapitulate progenitor self-assembly and enable high-fidelity in vivo disease modeling. Cell Stem Cell. 2025 Sep 17.. View in PubMed

Expansion of human pluripotent stem cell-induced nephron progenitor cells (iNPCs) and the generation of nephron organoids from iNPCs. Nat Protoc. 2025 Aug 29.. View in PubMed

Long-term expandable mouse and human-induced nephron progenitor cells enable kidney organoid maturation and modeling of plasticity and disease. Cell Stem Cell. 2024 Jun 06; 31(6):921-939.e17.. View in PubMed

Building a kidney tree: Functional collecting duct from human pluripotent stem cells. Dev Cell. 2022 10 10; 57(19):2251-2253.. View in PubMed

Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome protein forms nuclear condensates and regulates alternative splicing. Nat Commun. 2022 06 25; 13(1):3646.. View in PubMed

Approaches to kidney replacement therapies-opportunities and challenges. Front Cell Dev Biol. 2022; 10:953408.. View in PubMed

Generation of patterned kidney organoids that recapitulate the adult kidney collecting duct system from expandable ureteric bud progenitors. Nat Commun. 2021 06 15; 12(1):3641.. View in PubMed

Epigenetic regulation of kidney progenitor cells. Stem Cells Transl Med. 2020 Jun; 9(6):655-660.. View in PubMed

A Modular Differentiation System Maps Multiple Human Kidney Lineages from Pluripotent Stem Cells. Cell Rep. 2020 04 07; 31(1):107476.. View in PubMed

Kidney-in-a-lymph node: A novel organogenesis assay to model human renal development and test nephron progenitor cell fates. J Tissue Eng Regen Med. 2019 09; 13(9):1724-1731.. View in PubMed

Gene Editing in 3D Cultured Nephron Progenitor Cell Lines. Methods Mol Biol. 2019; 1926:151-159.. View in PubMed

Derivation of Pluripotent Stem Cells with In Vivo Embryonic and Extraembryonic Potency. Cell. 2017 04 06; 169(2):243-257.e25.. View in PubMed

Activin/Smad2-induced Histone H3 Lys-27 Trimethylation (H3K27me3) Reduction Is Crucial to Initiate Mesendoderm Differentiation of Human Embryonic Stem Cells. J Biol Chem. 2017 01 27; 292(4):1339-1350.. View in PubMed

3D Culture Supports Long-Term Expansion of Mouse and Human Nephrogenic Progenitors. Cell Stem Cell. 2016 10 06; 19(4):516-529.. View in PubMed

Activin Regulates Self-renewal and Differentiation of Trophoblast Stem Cells by Down-regulating the X Chromosome Gene Bcor. J Biol Chem. 2015 Sep 04; 290(36):22019-29.. View in PubMed

An alternative pluripotent state confers interspecies chimaeric competency. Nature. 2015 May 21; 521(7552):316-21.. View in PubMed

BMP induces cochlin expression to facilitate self-renewal and suppress neural differentiation of mouse embryonic stem cells. J Biol Chem. 2013 Mar 22; 288(12):8053-8060.. View in PubMed

Functions of BMP signaling in embryonic stem cell fate determination. Exp Cell Res. 2013 Jan 15; 319(2):113-9.. View in PubMed

TGF-? in Human Disease (Chapter 2). 2013.. View in PubMed

Fine-tune of intrinsic ERK activity by extrinsic BMP signaling in mouse embryonic stem cells. Protein Cell. 2012 Jun; 3(6):401-4.. View in PubMed

Where PI3K/Akt meets Smads: the crosstalk determines human embryonic stem cell fate. Cell Stem Cell. 2012 Mar 02; 10(3):231-2.. View in PubMed

BMP4 Signaling Acts via dual-specificity phosphatase 9 to control ERK activity in mouse embryonic stem cells. Cell Stem Cell. 2012 Feb 03; 10(2):171-82.. View in PubMed

Smad2 mediates Activin/Nodal signaling in mesendoderm differentiation of mouse embryonic stem cells. Cell Res. 2010 Dec; 20(12):1306-18.. View in PubMed

Genome-wide mapping of SMAD target genes reveals the role of BMP signaling in embryonic stem cell fate determination. Genome Res. 2010 Jan; 20(1):36-44.. View in PubMed

Trained as a stem cell biologist, Dr. Zhongwei Li has been using mouse models, human pluripotent stem cells, kidney progenitor cells, and kidney organoids as model systems to study stem cell biology, organ regeneration, and disease modeling for more than 17 years. As a graduate student in Dr. Ye-Guang Chen’s lab at Tsinghua University (2007-2012), he studied the molecular mechanisms of how different signaling pathways coordinate to determine pluripotent stem cell fates. Dr. Li identified a novel signaling cascade, BMP/Smad/DUSP9/ERK, essential in the crosstalk and intracellular integration of extrinsic signals (LIF and BMP) to regulate pluripotent stem cell fates (Li et al., Cell Stem Cell, 2012). As a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte's lab at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (2012-2017), he focused on kidney regeneration and developed a three-dimensional culture system which enabled, for the first time, the long-term expansion of primary nephron progenitor cells, which can further generate nephrons, the functional units of the kidney, in a nephron organoid model in vitro and in a chimeric mouse model in vivo (Li et al., Cell Stem Cell, 2016). As an assistant professor at USC (2017-present), his long-term research goal is to engineer a synthetic kidney from stem cells as an alternative off-the-shelf source for kidney transplantation (funded by NIH Director’s New Innovator Award). Dr. Li’s short-term research goal is to develop next-generation mature and functional kidney organoid models for kidney disease modeling and drug discovery (Zeng et al., Nature Communications, 2021; Huang et al., Cell Stem Cell, 2024). His research combines state-of-the-art stem cell technologies, genome editing tools, and bioengineering approaches to achieve these goals. Dr. Li’s lab integrates research strategies from a broad range of disciplines including molecular biology, cell biology, developmental biology, genetics, genomics, bioinformatics, and bioengineering.