Countless articles written about basic biomedical discoveries include some version of the sentence, “The researchers hope this can help develop new treatments for disease.” The basic scientists studying genes, proteins, and cellular mechanisms, however, often aren’t the same people doing the development. At some point, they need a partner with the right expertise to build the tools or design a drug molecule to translate those discoveries into clinical therapies.
Hening Lin, PhD, James and Karen Frank Family Professor of Medicine and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Chicago, is the unique brand of scientist who can do both. He’s part of a growing roster of scientists at the university working in the burgeoning field of chemical biology, which bridges the disciplines of chemistry, molecular biology, and medicine to fulfill the promise of those hopeful closing words typed by many a science writer.
A career of serendipity
Lin’s office in the Knapp Center for Biomedical Discovery overlooks the Center for Care and Discovery hospital building at UChicago Medicine, and the construction site of the new AbbVie Foundation Cancer Pavilion. That view, he says, explains his decision to join the faculty at UChicago in 2024 after a successful career at Cornell University.
“If you look at the top 20 institutions in the country, how many places have a top-ranked cancer program and a highly ranked medical school that are right next to each other? And then have a chemistry department within five minutes walking distance?” he said. “That’s why I really wanted to come here, to utilize that and promote translational research, not just in my own lab, but the whole campus.”
Lin didn’t necessarily get to this place by design; he says his early interest in science was more a matter of serendipity. As a kid growing up in a rural village of Shandong Province in China, he participated in science competitions at school and realized he had a knack for chemistry. “Those kinds of experiences made me realize, ‘Oh I’m pretty good at this.’ So, when I went to college [at Tsinghua University in Beijing] and chose what major I would be studying, I naturally picked chemistry,” he said.
Read the rest of the article by Matt Wood first published on May 13, 2025.