An organism is a complex composed with various types of organs and cells that closely cooperate and interact with each other. As a result, the lesions caused by diseases are not restricted in a certain local area, but usually lead to systemic effects. However, due to the opacity of biological tissue, conventional microscopy has to rely on tissue slices, which is becoming increasingly difficult to perform comprehensive analyses of interactions between different body regions at whole organisms level. In recent years, the rapidly developing technology of tissue clearing, which allows high-throughput scanning of transparent tissue and preserves the integrity of samples without tissue sectioning, provides a valuable technological pathway for systems biomedical research.

Previous works by Dr. Pan have established a variety of whole-body tissue clearing and imaging techniques (Cell 2019, Nature Neuroscience 2019, Nature Methods 2016, Nature Protocols 2023, all as cover stories). Applying these novel methodologies has enabled high-throughput whole-body systematic unbiased analysis, and led to discoveries in various biomedical research fields including neuroscience and cancer biology. The current research focus of Dr. Pan’s lab includes:

1、Developing and optimizing whole-body tissue clearing and imaging technologies.

2、Combining various in vivo and in vitro experiments to study systemic pathologies caused by neurodegenerative diseases.

3、Integrating various in vivo and in vitro techniques to investigate the interactions between the nervous system and systemic cancer metastases.