Pin-Chung (Tony) Cheng

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Hi, I am Tony Cheng.

I am a Genomics Scientist at Stanford University in the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience, specializing in epigenomics and brain aging.

I hold an M.D. and a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences / Quantitative Biology from UC San Diego, completed in collaboration with Altos Labs. During my doctoral work in the Kun Zhang Lab, I developed RETrace2—a dual-omic single-cell platform for lineage tracing and methylation profiling that improved lineage resolution ~250-fold. I combine deep wet-lab expertise with scalable bioinformatic pipelines (Python, R, Linux/Bash) to study aging, cancer, and regenerative medicine.

Originally from Taichung, Taiwan, I also hold an M.S. in stem cell biology from USC. Before genomics, I researched neurodegeneration and stem cell aging.

I am passionate about using high-throughput technologies and computational tools to improve healthcare and make an impact.

Based in Palo Alto, outside the lab I enjoy exploring California’s outdoors and Taiwanese food and boba.

 

Selected Publications

  1. bioRxiv
    High-resolution retrospective single cell lineage tracing with mutable homopolymers
    Pin-Chung Cheng, Dmitrii Kamenev, Polina Kameneva, Conor Fitzpatrick, Igor Adameyko, Peter V Kharchenko, and Kun Zhang
    bioRxiv, Mar 2026
    In review at Nature Communications
    DOI HTML PDF Code
  2. PDH Mediated Mitochondrial Respiration Controls the Speed of Muscle Stem Cell Activation in Muscle Repair and Aging
    Manmeet H Raval, Pin-Chung Cheng, Nicholas Guardino, Sanjana Ahsan, Hao Zhou, Rajiv Lochan Tiwari, Lu Wang, Andrew Chareunsouk, Maxwell Ederer, Ara B Hwang, and others
    bioRxiv, Mar 2020