Chen receives $5.4 million NIH Director’s Pioneer Award
The highly competitive award supports high-risk, high-reward projects
Hong Chen, a researcher at Washington University in St. Louis, has received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s Pioneer Award to use ultrasound to induce a hibernation-like state in mammals — something that was previously considered to be science fiction.
The five-year, $5.4 million award is one of eight awarded following a highly competitive application and interview by peer scientist-researchers nationwide. The award supports innovative researchers who propose bold research projects with unusually broad scientific impact. Chen is one of three WashU faculty to receive awards in 2024.
“Over Hong’s time in biomedical engineering, she has unveiled a steady stream of therapeutic and diagnostic innovations that leave us hopeful for a pain-free, disease-free future,” said Lori Setton, the Lucy & Stanley Lopata Distinguished Professor and chair of Biomedical Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering. “This most recent success with ultrasound-induced torpor promises to change how we think about organ failure and replacement, cardiac pathology, and more generally, human health. Hong has identified a new frontier that she is sure to transform with this NIH Pioneer Award.
“Dr. Chen is a scientific superstar,” said Gregory J. Zipfel, MD, the Ralph G. Dacey Distinguished Professor of Neurological Surgery and head of the Department of Neurosurgery. “She has been a major asset to WashU Medicine, McKelvey Engineering, and the departments of neurosurgery and biomedical engineering in her years here at WashU. Her deeply collaborative nature has led to pioneering discoveries in a number of important areas that are likely to ultimately change the way we care for patients with neurological disease. She absolutely is deserving of this prestigious award.”
Chen, associate professor of biomedical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering and of neurosurgery in the School of Medicine, published results of her initial work using ultrasound to induce torpor, or a hibernation-like state, in Nature Metabolism in 2023. Chen and a multidisciplinary team induced a hibernation-like state in mice by using ultrasound to stimulate the hypothalamus preoptic area in the brain, which helps to regulate body temperature and metabolism. In addition to the mouse, which naturally goes into torpor, Chen and her team induced torpor in a rat, which does not. Their findings showed the first noninvasive and safe method to induce a hibernation-like state by targeting the central nervous system.
“Building on these promising discoveries, we propose the audacious hypothesis that neural pathways critical for metabolism regulation are conserved across mammals and can be activated by ultrasound,” Chen said. “Our overarching goal is to pioneer a platform technique that harnesses ultrasound for the noninvasive and safe induction of artificial hibernation, thereby catalyzing disruptive medical innovations.”
If successful, the technique could transform metabolism research and change how metabolic states are manipulated. In addition, it could provide evidence for the future clinical translation of ultrasound-induced artificial hibernation, Chen said.
To reach this goal, Chen and her team plan to use an interdisciplinary approach that combines ultrasound engineering, system neuroscience, physiology, molecular biology, brain functional imaging and behavior assays to determine the molecular, cellular, neural circuit and system-level mechanisms that support ultrasound-induced artificial hibernation in mice and rats. In addition, they will consider how effective ultrasound-induced artificial hibernation is in treating stroke using a rat model and determine if the technique is translatable to large animal models as a step toward application in humans.
To be considered “pioneering,” the proposed research must reflect ideas that are substantially different from those being pursued in the investigator’s research program or elsewhere. Chen’s lab has been focused on developing ultrasound devices and technology. With this project, she is moving her research program toward to the bold new interdisciplinary field of NeuroSonics, which integrates breakthroughs in neuroscience and ultrasonics to deepen our understanding of brain function and transform the management of neurological diseases.
In 2024, she was named a senior member of the National Academy of Inventors. In 2020, she received the Frederic Lizzi Early Career Award from the International Society of Therapeutic Ultrasound (ISTU), which recognizes individuals early in their professional career who have contributed substantially to the advancement of therapeutic ultrasound. Chen is a pioneering researcher and a passionate mentor. In recognition of her exceptional mentorship and teaching, she was honored with the 2024 Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award and the 2019 Chair's Award for Outstanding Teaching from WashU.
Chen joined WashU in July 2015. She is a faculty member of the Division of Neurotechnology in the Department of Neurosurgery and a member of the Brain Tumor Center. She is also an affiliated faculty of the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, the Division of Biology & Biomedical Sciences, the Siteman Cancer Center, the Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences and the Hope Center for Neurological Disorders, all at the School of Medicine. From 2012 to 2015, she was a postdoctoral research scientist in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University. She earned a doctorate in bioengineering from the University of Washington in 2011, where she later worked as a senior fellow in the School of Medicine.
