Qiangsun Zheng
Cardiologist at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University whose group studies atrial fibrillation as a disorder of heart metabolism, in mice and in patients
Department of Cardiology (Cardiovascular Medicine), The Second Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University
Qiangsun Zheng is the senior author of the Atlas study JIN2026B. Atrial fibrillation, an irregular rhythm of the heart's upper chambers, becomes much more common with age. The team aged mice quickly with D-galactose injections and fed some of them rapamycin. Rapamycin lowered the animals' susceptibility to atrial fibrillation and eased the structural and electrical remodelling of the atria. It also improved mitochondrial function and insulin sensitivity. The authors traced the effect mainly to lower activity of HIF-1 alpha, a protein that switches cell metabolism under low oxygen, and described it as independent of mTOR. The evidence comes from one mouse aging model.
Zheng leads a cardiology group that works closely with Xinghua Qin's laboratory at Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an. Their mouse studies treat atrial fibrillation as partly a metabolic disease: a molecule released during exercise (BAIBA) protected obese mice through the energy sensor AMPK (2024), excess succinate raised the risk by harming mitochondria (2025), branched-chain amino acids raised it and swimming lowered it (2025), and very intense exercise raised it through over-active autophagy (2025). The group also studies reperfusion injury after heart attack.
On the clinical side, Zheng's recent papers look for blood markers that predict outcomes, such as an inflammation and nutrition score that forecast whether atrial fibrillation returns after catheter ablation (2026) and inflammation-related proteins in acute coronary syndrome (2026).
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | A | Rapamycin attenuates age-related atrial remodeling and fibrillation by targeting HIF-1α-mediated metabolic dysregulation. JIN2026B Senior author: led the study showing that rapamycin reduced atrial fibrillation susceptibility in D-galactose-aged mice, mainly through HIF-1 alpha rather than mTOR. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 1
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Qiangsun Zheng.
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- Lingyan Jin Cardiology researcher in Qiangsun Zheng's group in Xi'an who studies how metabolism and aging make the heart's upper chambers prone to atrial fibrillation
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