Cheng-Ming Chuong

Cheng-Ming Chuong (; born 1952) is a Taiwanese-American physician-scientist specializing in biomedical science. He is a professor of pathology at the University of Southern California and an academician of Academia Sinica in Taiwan. He then earned his Ph.D. in developmental biology and molecular biology in 1983 from Rockefeller University. As a doctoral student, he studied neural cell adhesion molecules and pattern formation with Gerald M. Edelman and worked on identifying neural cell adhesion molecules and pattern formation in the brain. The research of his laboratory has been supported by National Institute of Health since 1988.

He uses skin appendages as an experimental model and studies their organizing principles. In 2009, he edited another special issue with Michael K. Richardson on Pattern Formation. In 2016, he published an essay on "The Tao of integuments" in Science. He is mostly notable for:

Tissue patterning in the developing skin. In 1998, Chuong's laboratory showed how FGF/BMP fulfills Turing activator / inhibitor criteria in feather periodic pattern formation. In 1999, they demonstrated self-organizing process in skin explants using dissociated dermal cells. They further showed the assembly of dermal muscle network via mechanical force to build complex tissue patterning in the skin.

Building region-specific feathers. Chuong's laboratory set up a model to study feather follicle which allows them to identify feather stem cells and molecular circuits involved in forming radially symmetric, bilaterally symmetric, and bilaterally asymmetric feathers, as well as barb branch types (feather vane vs fluffy branches) from the proximal to distal feather. In 2019, they publish a comprehensive paper on the bio-architecture and adaptation of flight feathers.

Reveal collective regenerative behavior in a hair follicle population. Chuong's team demonstrated intra-dermal adipose tissue exhibits BMP cycling which is out of phase with epidermal beta-catenin cycling in hair follicles. Further, the intra-dermal adipose BMP remains high during pregnancy and lactation to maintain hairs for nursing. These findings led to the concept that the extra-follicular macro-environment such as hormones, seasons, aging, can also modulate hair follicle stem cell activity. They developed Cellular Automata model to describe this temporal patterning process. Based on these, with topologically well-positioned hair plucking, they demonstrated an organ level quorum sensing process which can be hair regeneration more than those plucked. Furthermore, they showed that tissue rigidity is involved in wound induced follicle neogenesis and can be modulated to enhance Turing periodic patterning process for de novo hair regeneration. With these achievements, they are able to build reconstituted skin from dissociated progenitor cells for regenerative engineering.

Evo-Devo of integumentary organs. In addition to the micro-evolution, which is the modification of organ shape, size, such as those seen in feathers, beaks, or tooth, Chuong's team worked on the macro-evolution mechanisms by converting scales into feathers. They demonstrated the different regenerative mechanism of three different integumentary follicle types, hair, feather, and tooth. Chuong also works with paleontologists on Mesozoic feathers. The "Birth of Birds" was chosen as one of the 10 breakthroughs in 2014 by Science.

Honors and awards 1988: American Cancer Society Junior Faculty Research Award

1991: Robert Cleland Teaching Award

1992: Zumberg Fellow, University of Southern California

1994: Robert Cleland Teaching Award, University of Southern California

2002: Don Orwin Lecture, Australia

2006: Saxén Medal awardee, Sigrid Juselius International Symposium, Finland

2015: Elected to American Association for the Advancement of Science as a fellow

2016: Kligman/Frost Leadership Award, Soc. Investigative Dermatology

2018: Keynote, American Hair Research Summit

2018: Keynote, Taiwan Society for Developmental Biology

2020: NIH R37 MERIT award status, "Tissue patterning in living skin and explant cultures"

2021: Plenary talk, Am Association for Anatomy, annual meeting in Exp. Biology

Chuong has served as associated editors and in editorial boards in major developmental biology and dermatology journals. His grant on tissue patterning is awarded MERIT status in 2020. He helps set up Integrative Evolutionary Galliform Genomics (iEGG) in National Chung Hsing University, International Wound Repair and Regenerative Center (iWRR) in National Cheng Kung University,