Wei Zheng's Biography

Wei Zheng, Group Leader, National Institute of Health

Dr. Wei Zheng received his Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he studied ion channel pharmacology and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular biology. Prior to joining the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2005, Dr. Zheng spent 12 years as a researcher at pharmaceutical companies, including Berlex, Amgen, and Merck, where he gained broad experience in drug target and lead discovery in cancer and in cardiovascular, autoimmune, neurodegenerative and infectious diseases.
At the NIH, Dr. Zheng has collaborated with many NIH and academic investigators on high-throughput screening and probe discovery projects that led to the identification of more than two dozen small molecule probes for use as research tools. He also has conducted drug discovery and development research for rare and neglected diseases with a focus on the lysosomal storage diseases. Currently, he is leading a group of biologists to support pre-clinical drug development as part of the Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases (TRND) program. Dr. Zheng’s group is also working on using patient derived induced pluripotent stem cells as a cell-based disease model for evaluation of drug efficacy.