Zhe Han

Zhe Han is a Professor at the University of Maryland with primary appointment in Medicine and secondary appointment in Physiology. As Director of the Center for Precision Disease Modeling, he develops Drosophila and human cell models to validate genetic variants causing heart, kidney, blood, muscle, and metabolic diseases, advancing precision medicine approaches.

• PhD in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, University of Michigan (2002)
• Postdoc in Molecular Biology, UT Southwestern (2006)

His lab pioneered Drosophila as a high-throughput system for congenital heart disease and genetic kidney diseases, discovering nephrocyte-podocyte functional equivalence and developing gene replacement methods. Recent work includes COVID-19 pathogenic protein identification and APOL1 nephropathy mechanisms.

Key research areas:

• Heart development and disease
• Kidney filtration and reabsorption
• Genetic variant validation
• Drug discovery for rare diseases
• Comparative disease modeling

Major scientific contributions include:

• Establishing Drosophila heart as CHD validation platform
• First in vivo nephrocyte functional assay
• Identifying Q10 as COQ2 nephropathy treatment
• APOL1 nephropathy mechanism discovery
• SARS-CoV-2 Nsp6 pathogenicity elucidation

Scientific leadership includes:

• Multiple NIH R01 grants (2008-present)
• NIH INCLUDE Supplement (2019)
• Community mentorship at Thomas Jefferson High School
• Leadership in Society of Chinese Bioscientists in America

His work bridges Drosophila genetics with human clinical applications, focusing on translational mechanisms and targeted therapies for genetically complex diseases.