The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 amid the cherry blossom season in Washington D.C. not only caused the famous cherry blossom festival to go online for the first time in the America history, but also forced the SCBA DC-Baltimore Chapter to postpone its well-planned annual scientific symposium in March. As the hope for a quick control of the pandemic dwindled, the chapter finally decided to turn the event into a virtual feast. The two half-day SCBA DC-Baltimore chapter zoom symposium held on December 11 and 12 attracted more than 100 attendees and 22 speakers and was filled with both scientific joys and holiday delights.

The program consists of a keynote speech, four regular sessions, a special COVID-19 session, and concurrent breakout room panel discussions/social time. This year’s keynote speaker is Dr. Hao Wu, the Asa and Patricia Springer Professor of Structural Biology from Harvard Medical School. Dr. Wu introduced her recent work, which elucidates the structure and function of Gastermin, a pore-forming protein essential for inflammation-induced release of certain cytokines that do not carry a signal sequence for secretion from the endoplasmic reticulum. How these cytokines are secreted during inflammation has remained a mystery until recent work by Dr. Wu and other laboratories.

The regular sessions are also packed with exciting scientific discoveries, many of which made by young tenure-track investigators. In the New Frontiers in Neuroscience session, Dr. Quan Yuan, a Stadtman tenure-track investigator in the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Strokes (NINDS) discussed the role of a lipoprotein receptor in regulation of dendrite morphology in Drosophila brains. Dr. Wei Lu, another Stadtman tenure-track investigator in the same institute explained how their work defines the assembly and trafficking process for a key neurotransmitter receptor complex, while Dr. Shuying Sun, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University showed how a genome wide CRISPR screen can reveal novel mechanisms of neurodegeneration and pinpoint potential strategies of drug intervention for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Likewise, the Molecular Mechanism session and the Technology Development session also feature outstanding presentations mostly from tenure-track investigators such as Dr. Jinwei Zhang of the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive, and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), Dr. Haiming Cao of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), Dr. Shuo Gu of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), Dr. Ling Hao of George Washington University and Dr. Bin Wu from Johns Hopkins University. Of a particular note is Dr. Bin Wu’s talk, which described their work published recently in Science. The study reported a novel CRISPR platform that allows gene inactivation to be achieved in a highly precise manner both in space and time.

The COVID-19 special session includes eight short talks. The topics range from basic structural studies of SARS-CoV-2 proteins to clinical trial studies. Among them, Dr. Pan Zheng, the chief medical officer from OncoImmune reported stellar results from their interim analysis of the ongoing SACCOVID clinical trial, which show that a single dose of CD24Fc treatment significantly shortens the hospitalization duration and reduces the mortality rate among severe COVID-19 patients. Following the release of the positive data, the company, founded by our chapter president Dr. Yang Liu (University of Maryland) and Dr. Pan Zheng was acquired by Merck recently.

The symposium was followed by chapter’s annual business meeting, in which Dr. Yang Liu summarized the major activities of the chapter and member achievements in 2020. Despite the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, members of our chapter have worked extremely hard, fighting the pandemic both in and out of the laboratory. Our members have remained highly productive, publishing many papers in high-impact journals and receiving various awards (see @DcScba at Twitter for details). The meeting also elected Dr. Zhe Han as the president-elect of the SCBA DC-Baltimore chapter. Dr. Han is currently an associate professor and the director of the newly established Center for Precision Disease Modeling in University of Maryland.

The event was organized by Drs. Zhe Han, Yihong Ye and Yi Ding (President of the NIH Chinese Student Scholar Association). Session chairs include Drs. Hongbing Wang (University of Maryland), Hong Xu (NHLBI), Jiou Wang (Johns Hopkins University) and Kai Ge (NIDDK), Richard Zhao (University of Maryland) and Zhi-ming Zheng (NCI). The concurrent grant writing and career development discussions were led by Drs. Huiqing Li (NHLBI), Xincheng Zheng (NIAMS, National Institutes of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin diseases), Zhe Han, Frank Li (BLA Regulatory, LLC), Judy Yu (AstraZeneca) , Ling Hao (George Washington University) and Yihong Ye.

Program Agenda