Xiaohui Zha
Ph.D.
Senior Scientist, Inflammation and Chronic Disease
Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
Professor, Department of Medicine & Department of Biochemistry
Microbiology and Immunology
Bio
Dr. Zha earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Cornell University, where she specialized in secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). She completed her postdoctoral training in cell biology at Columbia University with Dr. Fred Maxfield, applying advanced fluorescence microscopy to investigate cellular membrane dynamics. During this time, she developed a lasting interest in cholesterol biology—specifically, how cholesterol dysregulation contributes to human disease.
Her research program seeks to uncover the fundamental roles of cholesterol: what it does, why it is unique to animals, and how its imbalance underlies a range of modern health disorders. Emerging findings suggest that cholesterol functions as an environmental factor that shapes immune responses, highlighting the importance of maintaining low plasma cholesterol to protect against acute infections.
More recently, Dr. Zha has focused on macrophages, examining how cholesterol influences their inflammatory responses through epigenetic reprogramming. Using genomic tools such as ChIP-seq, RNA-seq, and ATAC-seq, her team is identifying cholesterol-regulated epigenetic pathways that drive macrophage plasticity and immune polarization.
