Xiaojie Qiu, PhD, joins Stanford’s bold initiative to cure congenital heart disease
Growing up in a remote town in rural China, Xiaojie Qiu’s early life was defined by hardship. Qiu was just 10 years old when his father died in a work accident. He was sent to live with his grandparents, who had little means but prioritized his education.
“They were the best grandparents in the world,” Qiu recalls. “They were not educated, but they valued the importance of education and supported me to pursue my dreams.”
Qiu excelled academically, studying for as many as 16 hours a day and earning a spot at a top school in his region. His interest in science blossomed, and his academic journey took him to the United States, where his research garnered national attention, making the cover of the prestigious journal Cell.
In December 2023, Qiu came to Stanford, becoming the fourth team member of the Betty Irene Moore Children’s Heart Center’s Basic Science and Engineering (BASE) Initiative, a one-of-a-kind research program that aims to understand and ultimately cure congenital heart disease (CHD). BASE unites researchers from different scientific disciplines who partner on new approaches to tackle CHD, which affects 1 in every 100 babies in the U.S.
As an assistant professor of genetics and computer science, Qiu is using single-cell genomics and machine learning to tackle key challenges in heart research. Recent advancements allow for the study of millions of cells at once to help understand how organs form. But it’s still impossible to know exactly where each cell is located within the organ and track cells over time. Qiu is pioneering approaches to overcome these obstacles and help researchers create a map—similar to Google Earth—that depicts where and when heart disease develops at a cellular level.
“When I started out, I knew that to understand heart disease, we would need to know when and where genes start to behave differently than they do in a healthy heart,” Qiu says. “To get those answers would require studying millions of cells and thousands of genes per cell over time and space. My approach allows us to track genes expressed by individual cells for the first time, which will help us know which cells are associated with heart disease, and at precisely which point in the heart’s development.”
Qiu’s research will provide the rest of the BASE team with sophisticated new insights to apply in their work.
Marlene Rabinovitch, MD, director of BASE and the Dwight and Vera Dunlevie Professor of Pediatric Cardiology, is thrilled by the knowledge Qiu brings. “Xiaojie is doing something that has never been done before,” Rabinovitch says. “His unique expertise, and how it complements the work of the full BASE team, creates the potential to transform the field and change so many children’s lives.”
Fellow BASE scientist Mark Skylar-Scott, PhD, is excited by the potential of Qiu’s research. “As a 3D bioprinting engineer, I see Xiaojie’s maps as instruction manuals for how to build a heart,” Skylar-Scott says. “His computational wizardry is a cornerstone to BASE’s success.”
Right now, Qiu is focused on applying his new technologies to create a 3D map of a mouse heart, as it develops from the early stages to a fully formed heart. He aims to do the same for a human embryo.
Qiu recently received a generous gift from philanthropists Pantas Sutardja and Ting Chuk to support this project. “We are excited to partner with Xiaojie on his pioneering work to unlock new understanding of congenital heart disease,” say Sutardja and Chuk. “We look forward to celebrating what Xiaojie, and the entire BASE team, will accomplish in the coming years.”
“I’m extremely grateful to be where I am, to work with brilliant scientists to solve big problems,” Qiu says. “I’m thankful to my family for supporting me to get here, and proud to overcome obstacles and achieve my dreams.”
This article originally appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of the Packard Children’s News.
