Congratulations to Qinheng Zheng, Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, on being named one of the 2026 Smith Family Fellows. The Smith Family Awards Program for Excellence in Biomedical Research has been driving medical breakthroughs by launching the careers of newly independent biomedical researchers.
Qinheng’s work will focus on pharmacological restoration of mutant G protein activity, a new approach to tackling diseases. Rather than trying to block the impacts of mutations that drive disease, the traditional strategy for most therapeutics, his group aims to develop small drug-like molecules that will specifically repair what’s broken, thereby bringing back normal function via “chemical rescue.” Loss of G protein activity as a result of mutation underlie many disorders including pancreatic cancer, the context in which Qinheng is applying this approach as an initial proof-of-principle. If successful, this work could provide a first-of-its-kind therapy for patients with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancers with few treatment options. More broadly, this ‘restoration of function’ approach could establish a new path for therapeutic design in treating many other diseases where specific loss of normal protein function underlies disease etiology.
Find out more about Qinheng’s research here and see the full cohort of the 2026 Smith Family Fellows here.
