Xiaoxiao Zhang
Eye specialist at Guangzhou Aier Eye Hospital who works on childhood myopia, from school screening and myopia-control lenses to the biology of the sclera in animal models
Guangzhou Aier Eye Hospital, affiliated with Jinan University (PubMed affiliation 2023–2026) · Optometry and Strabismus Department (2023)
Myopia (short-sightedness) usually happens because the eyeball grows too long. The sclera, the tough white outer wall of the eye, has to remodel for that to happen. Xiaoxiao Zhang was senior author of the 2026 FASEB Journal study in this Atlas (WEN2026), which used human scleral cells and guinea pigs whose eyes were covered to induce myopia. Too much autophagy in the sclera, the cell's recycling system, appeared to link low-oxygen stress to the remodelling. Rapamycin injected under the conjunctiva made the myopia worse, the autophagy blocker 3-MA eased it, and atropine eye drops slowed it. The team measured AMPK/mTOR/P70S6K signalling, but the paper does not show that this route causes the effect, and the results come from cells and animals, not children.
A companion 2026 paper from the same Guangzhou group, again with Zhang as last author, traced the low-oxygen signal one step further: in hypoxic scleral cells and in guinea pigs, the HIF-1alpha protein pushed cells towards glycolysis and lactate production, and blocking glycolysis reduced myopic eye growth.
Much of Zhang's other published work is clinical. PubMed lists papers from Guangzhou Aier Eye Hospital on a vision screening of more than 170,000 primary school pupils in three Guangzhou districts (2025), on predicting eye growth in children wearing orthokeratology night lenses over six years (2025), on comparing two kinds of myopia-control spectacle lenses (2023), and on eyelid hygiene during orthokeratology (2026). The hospital is affiliated with Jinan University.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | A | Role of Autophagy in Scleral Remodeling During Form-Deprivation Myopia WEN2026 Senior author: led the guinea pig and scleral cell study linking excess scleral autophagy to myopia, in which rapamycin worsened and 3-MA eased experimental myopia. |
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