Xianglong Chen
Orthopedic researcher at Union Hospital, Wuhan, and first author of a 2026 study that found a new route by which failing autophagy switches on mTORC1 and drives spinal disc degeneration
Department of Orthopedics, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology (at the time of the study, 2026)
The discs between the vertebrae act as shock absorbers, and their slow degeneration is a major cause of back pain. Xianglong Chen's 2026 study in Advanced Science, with Y. Zhang as senior author, focused on chaperone-mediated autophagy, a selective clean-up route in which single proteins are fed one by one into the lysosome through a receptor called LAMP2A.
In disc cells from patients and in rat models, this pathway was weakened. One of its usual cargoes, the protein midnolin, then built up. Midnolin bound TSC2, part of the main brake on mTORC1, and sent it to the proteasome, the cell's protein shredder, without the usual ubiquitin tag. With the brake gone, mTORC1 became overactive, and the disc cells became senescent, released inflammatory signals and lost their matrix. Reducing midnolin, adding back LAMP2A or giving rapamycin each blocked the damage in cells and rats. The study describes a new upstream route to mTORC1 overactivity; it has not been tested as a treatment in people.
PubMed lists Xianglong Chen at the Department of Orthopedics of Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology. A current position could not be confirmed from an official page.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | A | Impaired Chaperone-Mediated Autophagy Accelerates Intervertebral Disc Degeneration by Inducing MIDN Accumulation to Target TSC2 for Proteasomal Degradation CHEN2026C First author: showed that impaired chaperone-mediated autophagy lets midnolin accumulate and destroy TSC2, overactivating mTORC1 and driving disc degeneration in human cells and rats. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 1
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Xianglong Chen.
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- Yukun Zhang Senior author of a study showing that failing chaperone-mediated autophagy lets midnolin accumulate and degrade TSC2, overactivating mTORC1 and accelerating intervertebral disc degeneration
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