Principal Investigator:  Dr. An Cheng 

Dr. An Cheng is an Associate Professor, Doctoral Supervisor, and "Pioneering Scholar" at the School of Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University. He earned his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Tohoku University in 2022, where he subsequently served as an Assistant Professor, followed by postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) from 2023 to 2025. Dr. Cheng's research is dedicated to elucidating the pathological mechanisms of central nervous system and retinal degenerative diseases, with a particular focus on the role of key protein families (e.g., FABPs) in neuroinflammation and cell death (such as ferroptosis) in multiple system atrophy (MSA) and multiple sclerosis (MS). Translating these benchside discoveries into clinical applications, he has successfully developed the promising BRI series of small-molecule inhibitors (including MF6 and Ligand 7), with BRI-301 and BRI-101 entering Phase I clinical trials in Japan in 2023 and 2026, respectively. To date, Dr. Cheng has authored over 20 high-impact academic publications, with representative first or corresponding author papers in internationally renowned journals including Brain, eBioMedicine, Redox Biology, and Acta Pharmacologica Sinica.