A collaborative study by Prof. Tao Cheng, Prof. Hui Cheng, Prof. Erlie Jiang from the Institute of Hematology & Blood Diseases Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, and Prof. Zeping Hu from Tsinghua University, published in Blood, establishes the first comprehensive metabolic atlas of human bone marrow hematopoiesis and identifies L-carnitine-driven fatty acid oxidation as a critical regulator of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell regeneration through the PPARA-TFEB signaling axis. Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), defined by their capacity for self-renewal and multipotency, are the foundation of life-long blood production and hold tremendous potential for stem cell-based therapies. Cellular metabolism critically influences HSC fate decisions, making metabolic intervention a promising strategy to enhance stem cell function for clinical applications such as bone marrow transplantation. However, direct metabolic profiling of human HS...

A collaborative team led by Tao Cheng, Hui Cheng, and Toshio Suda from the Institute of Hematology & Blood Diseases Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, together with Prof. Qi Chen from the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, published a research article online in Blood entitled, Procr⁺ endothelial progenitor cells govern hematopoiesis through fine-tuning mesenchymal stem cell niche signals. Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) rely on the bone marrow microenvironment to maintain their quiescence, self-renewal, and differentiation capacity. Endothelial cells, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), and other stromal cells collectively constitute the hematopoietic microenvironment in the bone marrow and establish a complex signaling network that regulates hematopoiesis. With the development of genetic and imaging technologies, our understanding of the structure and function of the hematopoietic microenvironm...

A study published in Cell on July 20, 2026, presents Viral protease-Initiated lytic cell Death (VID), a universal antiviral mRNA therapeutic platform that exploits viral proteases to selectively destroy infected cells. The work was carried out jointly by Aiping Wu’s group at the Suzhou Institute of Systems Medicine (CAMS & PUMC) and Cheng-Feng Qin and Yi-Jiao Huang’s group at the Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS). The study introduces the concept of VID and demonstrates that a single modular platform, combined with a generative AI–driven molecular design workflow, can target phylogenetically diverse viruses, completing the full design-to-validation cycle in one round of experiments. Viruses depend on their own proteases to cleave polyproteins early in infection, and these enzymes are highly selective for their cognate substrates. VID activators (VIDAs) turn this selectivity against the virus. The native caspase-cleavage site in the pyroptotic effector GSDMD is rep...

On January 9, 2026, a collaborative study led by Ziyi Li at the Institute of Systems Medicine, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College / Suzhou Institute of Systems Medicine (ISM), and Dr. Svetoslav Chakarov at the Shanghai Institute of Immunology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, was published in Nature Immunology. The study, entitled “Temporal and spatial atlas of eosinophil specialization across tissues,” presents the first dynamic cross-tissue atlas of eosinophil development and specialization in mice. Eosinophils are an important population of granulocytes involved in immune regulation, metabolic homeostasis, and tissue repair. However, a fundamental question has remained unresolved: how do eosinophils acquire distinct identities and functions after entering different tissues?By integrating single-cell transcriptomics, high-dimensional surface proteomic profiling, and lineage-tracing approaches, the researchers reconstructed ...

On March 4, 2026, a collaborative research team led by Guideng Li(Suzhou Institute of Systems Medicine, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences), Hua Wu(Suzhou Medical College of Soochow University), and Lingchuan Guo(the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University) published a research article entitled “Extracellular CD44 lactylation impairs CD8⁺ T cell function in KRAS-mutant colorectal cancer” in Nature Metabolism. The study reveals a previously unrecognized mechanism by which KRAS-mutant colorectal cancer cells suppress T cell-mediated antitumor immunity through extracellular lactylation of CD44. The authors demonstrated that KRAS mutations inducedERK1/2-dependent phosphorylation of TRIP6, thereby disrupting its interaction with KDM1A and consequentially upregulating ENO2 expression and lactate production. Tumor-derived lactate, together with the lactate-transfer enzyme AARS1, promoteslactylation of the extracellular domain of CD44 on CD8⁺ T cells. This modification weaken...

A new clinical study by Prof. Jun Shi and Haiqing Xiongfrom PUMC & CAMSpublished in the New England Journal of Medicinereports that CD19-targeted chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy can induce rapid and durable drug-free remission in patients with multi-refractory autoimmune hemolytic anemia (AIHA), a severe autoimmune blood disorder for which effective treatment options are limited. AIHA is a rare but potentially life-threatening autoimmune disorder in which the immune system destroys red blood cells, causing severe anemia and repeated disease relapses. Although corticosteroids and rituximab are standard first- and second-line therapies, many patients eventually become refractory to treatment or experience multiple relapses, leaving few effective therapeutic options. The investigator-initiated study enrolled 11 patients with primary AIHA who had failed at least three previous lines of therapy, including anti-CD20 treatment. Following a single infusion of autol...