Prof. Weizhi Ji currently is Member of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Professor and Director of Yunnan Key Laboratory of Primate Biomedical Research/ Institute of Primate Translational Medicine, Kunming University of Science and Technology. In 1985-1987, Prof. Ji worked as a scientist in Oregon National Primate Research Center and Smithsonian Institution in US. Since 1996 till 2005, he had served as the director of Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. In the meantime, from 1995 to 1997, he held visiting professor position in University of Wisconsin. In 1996, Prof. Ji was named the director of China-US Joint Primate Biology Laboratory, which was co-established by Kunming Institute of Zoology and Wisconsin Primate Research Center. Prof. Ji has been engaged in primate reproductive biology research since 1980s and he takes the lead in primate stem cell research in China. His lab reported the first gene-modified rhesus and cynomolgus monkeys via CRISPR-Cas9-mediated gene targeting in 2014 and then first showed the feasibility of generate chimeric monkeys using ESCs in 2015. His team has established human, monkey, rabbit and mouse embryonic stem cell lines and adult stem cell lines. His study found the mechanism of embryonic stem cells differentiate into neural stem cells in vivo and the integration mechanisms in vitro. Now his research focuses on generation of transgenic monkeys, stem cell self-renewal mechanisms and stem cell replacement therapy research, where he has published papers in top journals of this area, such as Cell, Cell Stem Cells, PNAS, Biology of Reproduction, and Human Reproduction.

Nonhuman primate models for human nervous diseases

As one of the most complex diseases, nervous diseases remain uncurable simply because of the lack of suitable animal models for the mechanism study. The genetic modified monkey may have a superiority as the animal model and will be advantageous to study developmental phenotypes at disease stages as nonhuman primates (NHP) is close to human in genetics. Recent advances in genome editing paved the way for the generation of NHP models for human diseases and a dozen of gene-edited monkey models resulted by a null mutation in a single gene lead to a clear phenotype which are detectable in the limited samples. Using TALEN- and CRISPR-mediated targeted base editing, and transgenic techniques, we have generated several monkey models of nervous diseases, all of which have demonstrated the similar phenotypes to the patients’ that can’t be mimicked in other species of disease models. Throughout the observations on monkey models, we can reveal the disease progress that also can’t be achieved directly in patients. The disease models will provide us a tool to understand the disease mechanism and give hopes for developing new treatment for the diseases. However, the development of an efficient methods for off-targeting tests is another key concern in gene edited disease models.