Asian American Neuroscientist of the Week (5/18)
- Xavier C
- May 17
- 1 min read
Guo-li Ming, a Chinese-American neuroscientist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, is a pioneer in using patient-derived human stem cells to study neurodevelopmental disorders. Trained first as a physician in China and later as a neuroscientist in the United States, Ming built her career around one goal: understanding how the human brain develops, adapts, and becomes vulnerable to disease.
Early in her career, she made fundamental discoveries about how neurons grow, form connections, and reshape themselves in adulthood. But her most influential work was on pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), stem cells that can take the form of any specialized cell in the body. Ming’s laboratory was one of the first to take cells from patients with neurological or psychiatric disorders and reprogram them into stem cells, then into neurons, thus creating living human models of complex conditions like schizophrenia, which preserved each patient’s unique genetic architecture.
Her team later extended this work to 3D brain organoids, small “mini-brain” structures that mimic aspects of early human development. During the Zika virus outbreak, those models showed how infection selectively damages neural stem cells. Her platforms have become foundational tools for studying how genetic risk factors and environmental exposures interact to shape brain development.
In recognition of her transformative contributions, Guo-li Ming was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2019. Today, her work continues to reshape how researchers study neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders, bringing the field closer to therapies grounded in human biology rather than animal approximations.
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