About Changping Laboratory

Changping Laboratory

Changping Laboratory, shortened to CPL, is a state-founded national laboratory in Beijing's Changping District. Established in 2020, it is one of China's new-type research and development institutions and describes itself as an important component of the nation's strategic scientific and technological force. Its focus is the life sciences. Led since its founding by the biophysical chemist Xiaoliang Sunney Xie of Peking University, the laboratory concentrates on biomedical omics technologies, immunodiagnosis and therapy technologies, advanced imaging and intervention technologies, and bio-artificial intelligence, and marked its fifth anniversary in 2025 with an international symposium on immunity and cancer.

Founding and mission

Changping Laboratory was founded by the state in 2020 as a new-type R&D institution with life science as its focus. In his director's message, Xie Xiaoliang states that the laboratory is tasked with addressing vital national needs, concentrating on key areas including biomedical omics technologies, immunodiagnosis and therapy technologies, advanced imaging and intervention technologies, and bio-artificial intelligence. By bringing together leading scientific and technological talents, it conducts organised research initiatives and carries out strategic, visionary and fundamental research spanning mechanism exploration, screening and diagnosis, and intervention and treatment. Its stated goal is to promote breakthroughs in key technologies, facilitate the translation of major scientific discoveries into practical applications, and become a world-class hub for innovation in the life sciences.

Director: Xiaoliang Sunney Xie

The laboratory's founding and current director is Xiaoliang Sunney Xie, the Lee Shau-kee Professor at Peking University, where he has also served as head of the Faculty of Sciences since 2019. Xie received his B.Sc. in Chemistry from Peking University in 1984 and his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of California, San Diego, in 1990, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago. He worked at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory from 1992 to 1998, rising from senior research scientist to chief scientist, then joined Harvard University, where he was a full professor from 1999 to 2009 and Mallinckrodt Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology from 2009 to 2018 — becoming, as his laboratory biography notes, the first tenured professor in 1998 and the first endowed professor in 2009 at Harvard among Chinese scholars since China's reform and opening up. He relocated to Peking University full-time in 2018, where he had directed the Biomedical Pioneering Innovation Center from 2010 to 2022 and the Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Genomics from 2016 to 2022, before becoming director of Changping Laboratory in 2020.

Xie's research background

Xie is recognised as a pioneer of single-molecule biophysical chemistry, coherent Raman scattering microscopy and single-cell genomics. The single-cell whole-genome amplification methods invented by his group, including the MALBAC method developed in 2012, have benefited thousands of families with monogenic diseases by preventing the passing of disease-causing mutations to their offspring; on 19 September 2014 the world's first MALBAC baby was born at Peking University Third Hospital. In the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, his team identified broad-spectrum neutralising antibodies against all SARS-CoV-2 variants, which were licensed to a major pharmaceutical company. His honours include the Albany Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research in 2015, the Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry of the American Chemical Society in 2015, and the Founders Award of the Biophysical Society in 2012. As director of CPL he received the Zhongguancun Award for Outstanding Contributions in the 2021 Beijing Science and Technology Awards, while five other CPL leading scientists received Beijing Science and Technology Progress Awards, three of them first class; CPL deputy director Feng Shao had won the Zhongguancun prize in 2020.

Organisation and approach

The laboratory describes its ambition as establishing an intersectional powerhouse, bringing forth both "0 to 1" fundamental breakthroughs and "1 to 10" technological transformations. It works jointly with partners in academia, higher education, healthcare and industry to build what it calls a rich and dynamic life science innovation ecosystem, in Beijing's Changping District, home to the Zhongguancun Life Science Park and the Beijing Future Science City life-science cluster. Xie credits the laboratory's development into a world-class innovative engine in the life sciences to its cohort of leading scientists and research teams together with support from state and municipal governments and collaborating universities, hospitals and corporations. Visiting scientists lecture regularly at the laboratory; in October 2025, for example, Alzheimer's researcher Lei Liu of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School spoke on the amyloid hypothesis and disease-modifying therapies.

Genomics and omics highlights: FOODIE

Among the research highlights published by the laboratory is FOODIE, a genome-wide footprinting approach for transcription factors using deaminase. Transcription factors control gene expression by binding DNA at regulatory regions with sequence-specific affinities, and accurate genome-wide measurement of those binding affinities is central to understanding gene regulation. The laboratory presents FOODIE as a transformative approach to that measurement problem, coupled with prediction of any transcription factor's binding affinity on DNA. The work sits squarely within CPL's biomedical omics remit and within the single-cell and single-molecule genomics tradition that its director helped to found.

Immunology highlights: SARS-CoV-2 scanning and oncolytic immunotherapy

Two of the laboratory's published highlights concern immunity and therapy. Its high-throughput deep mutational scanning platform for predicting SARS-CoV-2 immune-escape mutations is described as a world-leading platform for antibody and vaccine studies, allowing fast measurement of the immune pressure induced by infection and vaccination. Separately, CPL researchers are developing an oncolytic-virus approach in which virus-induced pyroptosis — inflammatory cell death — is targeted as a novel cancer immunotherapy, building a PD-1 immune-checkpoint-blockade-based combination therapy around tumour-cell pyroptosis. Together the two projects illustrate the laboratory's immunodiagnosis and therapy strand, running from viral surveillance through to experimental cancer treatment.

Cancer screening and stem-cell therapy highlights

A further highlight describes the path from a cancer methylome atlas to blood-based screening: a targeted multi-omics approach for cell-free DNA multi-cancer early detection, using blood cfDNA methylation, which the laboratory presents as ushering in a transformative era in cancer screening. In regenerative medicine, CPL highlights work on curing liver diseases using functional hepatocytes derived from human chemically induced pluripotent stem cells. The laboratory notes that the liver is the largest internal organ and central to metabolism, that liver dysfunction leads to a spectrum of diseases accounting for approximately two million deaths per year worldwide, and that stem-cell-derived hepatocytes offer a route toward new treatments where donor organs are scarce.

Imaging and brain-science highlights

Reflecting its advanced imaging and bio-artificial intelligence strands, the laboratory highlights work on personalised brain function sectors and their application in the treatment of neurodegenerative disease. The foundation of that work is DeepPrep, an accelerated, scalable and robust deep-learning-powered neuroimaging preprocessing pipeline, developed for an era in which neuroimaging is driven by large-scale studies, data sharing and international consortia. In July 2025 Xie himself lectured at City University of Hong Kong on genome-wide single-cell and single-molecule footprinting of transcription factors with deaminase, sharing his team's single-cell genomics advances — including whole-genome amplification methods that had by then enabled prevention of genetic diseases for more than 9,000 families, and the broad-spectrum neutralising antibody against COVID-19 variants.

Fifth anniversary and research output

To mark the fifth anniversary of Changping Laboratory in October 2025, leading scientists from China, the United States, Japan and Europe gathered for the "Immunity and Cancer Beijing 2025" symposium on the latest advances and future directions in immunology and oncology. The laboratory's publication output is tracked by the Nature Index: for the period from 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026 the index recorded a Count of 73 articles with CPL authors, including papers in Nature, Cell, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Methods, Nature Genetics, Nature Neuroscience, Immunity, Cancer Cell and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, with Nature Communications the single largest venue. That output, five years after its founding, marks CPL's emergence as a significant producer of high-end life-science research within China's national laboratory system.