Duan Jia and Cao Lei, members of the Biophysical Society of China (BSC), were included in the eighth Young Talent Promotion Project, according to the list recently released by the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST).

Duan Jia is an assistant research fellow at the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. She has been engaged in structural pharmacology and research on GPCR signal transduction mechanisms and drug discovery related to critical illness.

Duan systematically explored the structures of glycoprotein hormones and their receptors and revealed relevant signal transduction mechanisms and molecular mechanisms of their pathogenesis, providing guidance for drug research and development targeting at such receptors. She developed a new method to stabilize GPCRs and G-protein complexes for structural analysis, which is crucial for drug research and development. She also discovered the molecular mechanism of how GPCRs recognize and get phosphorylated by GRKs, one of the most difficult problems in GPCR research, and the molecular mechanism of biased GPCR signaling regulated by biased ligands.

Cao Lei is an associate research fellow at the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Cao, engaged in viral structural biology, has been committed to research on the three-dimensional structures and functions of viral particles and key compounds directly related to major infectious diseases. Cao explained the antigenic properties and invasion mechanisms of viruses as well as immunity mechanisms and cross-species transmissions. 

He studied the immunity mechanisms of the novel coronavirus and participated in the development of vaccines. He conducted research on the assembly and maturation mechanisms of the herpes virus as well as the invasion mechanism and drug development of picornaviridae.