TingTing Hong’s fondest memory as a child was visiting her grandparents in the rural Chinese countryside.

Set free during school’s summer breaks, she and her younger sister would pass the days catching small fish in the backyard pond, collecting flowers, and studying animals. When she returned to school, she turned that curious eye toward science, eagerly peeking through microscopes and checking classmate’s “vitals” with medical instruments.

That fixation became all too real in the final years of high school. Members of her family had histories of stroke and coronary artery disease, but it was her adored 72-year-old grandfather’s death that particularly troubled her. 

He was diagnosed with heart failure but refused to attend the nearest hospital. Instead, each time he had an episode, he went to a local rural clinic that had few resources. Impatient, he accelerated the drip speed of his IV medication, which led to his eventual demise. The quiet frustration of watching someone slip away without intervention never left her.

Heart failure—often described as cardiology's "biggest unsolved mystery"—is the inability of the heart to pump blood effectively around the body. Tasks as simple as combing hair or brushing teeth can leave patients exhausted beyond belief. And in advanced stages, that can feel like an eternal state of breathlessness.

Treatments exist, but they often come too late. And with heart transplants in limited number, most patients’ only choice is to wait and hope for a healthy heart.

TingTing became a physician at Peking University, wanting to be the kind of doctor her grandfather never had. Again, curiosity took root. Why did hearts fail in the first place? And why did current treatments reach patients so late in their disease?

Her studies took her far from home to the University of Michigan and then the University of California, San Francisco to continue her training and pursuit of science. There, she immersed herself in the microscopic language of the heart—how cells manage the delicate flow of electrical and chemical signals that keep hearts beating.

What excites TingTing most about research is exploring the unknown. Sometimes she feels like a translator, looking into nature for patterns and answers. It’s not always easy. “Scientific discovery has its ups and downs,” she says. But the magic comes in those bright moments of discovery. “You understand a little bit more about what nature’s trying to tell us. That’s the exciting part.”

By the time she arrived at University of Utah Health and relocated her own research lab here in 2020, the institution had long been recognized as a leader in cardiac innovation. It was here, more than 40 years earlier, that the world’s first permanent artificial heart was implanted. That pioneering spirit felt like the right place for her next chapter.

Here she continued her long-time collaboration with Robin M. Shaw, a fellow heart researcher who—alongside his passion for the inner workings of the heart—cared deeply for empowering the next generation of cardiac experts.

Together they burrowed down and discovered a key heart cell protein they named cardiac BIN1 (cBIN1). They found that the levels of cBIN1 decreased in a failing heart. But if the protein was directly injected into failing hearts in mice, the condition could be reversed. When they tested their discovery on pigs, they stumbled upon yet another breakthrough— the heart’s size normalized completely, and its pumping strength returned.

TingTing recalls that moment in the lab as bittersweet. She couldn’t help but think about her grandfather and all the heart failure patients she had treated in ICUs in China who died waiting for a transplant. Perhaps—one day—she’d be able to develop treatments for early-stage heart failure so patients would never have to walk through the hospital doors. Inspired by her grandfather’s memory, her work inches closer to making that dream a reality.

That legacy continues with her daughters, aged 18 and 15. “We play, we ask questions. They remind me of what I was like when I was a little girl.” She encourages them to be curious like she was.

TingTing is shy by default and prefers not to talk about herself, but she shares her work for their sake. “As a mom, a woman, a scientist, an educator… I want to tell my story to show other young women they can do it. You can make a difference. Tell the next generation’s story. Trust yourself and find your passion. That’s the most important part.”