Cell Biology and Chemical Biology Research The research of Professor Junying Yuan focuses on the molecular mechanisms that regulate cell death in health and diseases. Professor Yuan made ground-breaking discoveries on two major mechanisms of cell death, apoptosis and necroptosis. Her pioneering research has elucidated a series of key molecular mechanisms that c...

Natural Product Synthesis and Chemical Biology Professor Dawei Ma’s research interests currently focus on the development of new synthetic methodologies, the total synthesis of complex natural products and their SAR and action mode studies, as well as the discovery of small modulators for target proteins and special biological processes. One of his achievements is...

Mechanism of transmembrane signal transduction Professor Chou’s research interests currently focus on the control and activation of cytokine receptors and developing technologies for investigating receptor dynamics.

Synapse and brain diseases The research of Dr. Yelin Chen focuses on the function of N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) and how synapses are impaired in brain diseases. In graduate school, Dr. Chen was trained as a neuropharmacologist by Dr. P. Jeffrey Conn at Vanderbilt University Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery, where he developed an...

Physical-Chemical Cell Signaling Lab The membrane systems, composed of lipid bilayers, membrane proteins and the surrounding cortex, form the fundamental structures to compartmentalize a cell and its organelles. It has become increasingly clear that the membrane-based reactions are not only affected by chemical modifications, such as protein phosphorylati...

Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Discovery Our research group focuses on the design, synthesis, and preclinical evaluations of small molecule drugs for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, inflammation, and metabolic disorders. We specifically target proteins that are closely associated with the progression of these diseases but are difficult to...

Neural Injury and Neurodegeneration Our lab is generally interested in neurobiology of human disease. Specifically, our research focuses on the fundamental mechanisms underlying the maintenance of the nervous system and the molecular and cellular processes that lead to axon degeneration in neural injury as well as age-related neurodegenerative diseases, ...

Neural function and neurological disorders HeLab is interested in understanding how neural and brain function is regulated in the normal brain, and how they are dysregulated in the diseased brain. We are in particularly curious about the role of sleep and its correlation with our brain fitness, and the neuronal dysfunction associated with the early stage of neu...

Neurodegenerative disease research The research of Dr. He focuses on neuropathogenesis in neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD). He has been developing new disease research animal models with endogenous physiological protein transformed into pathological states as existing in patient...

Vascular Biology and Organ Homeostasis Dr. Junhao Hu's research interests focus on understanding the crosstalk between endothelial cells and pericytes, which constitute the blood vessel wall, as well as how such crosstalk controls vascular function and organ homeostasis.

Chemical Biology Lab The Hu research group in Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology is dedicated to investigating and controlling life processes through chemical means. Focused on bifunctional molecules (such as PROTAC, PhosTAC), the group utilizes chemical synthesis as a tool (Biology driven, chemistry empowered) to engineer life and r...

Transcription and Epigenetics Research The research in Dr. Li’s lab focuses on the transcriptional and epigenetic regulation of gene expression in neurodegenerative diseases and drug-resistant tumors. Genetic, biochemical and bioinformatic methods are integrated to investigate gene misregulation in multiple disease states.

Protein Folding and Aggregation Research The research of Liu laboratory focuses on the mechanisms of protein phase separation and pathological protein aggregation in neurodegenerative diseases (NDs). The key pathological hallmarks of neurodegenerative diseases are the formation and accumulation of misfolded proteins, that were previously only known to be cons...

Aging and Age-associated Degenerative Diseases Research The research of Dr. Nan Liu focuses on understanding the intrinsic mechanisms underlying age and age-associated events that impact adult life cycle and disease situations.

Circadian rhythms and sleep The Ma lab’s research focuses on the intersection of animal behaviors and molecular neurobiology, utilizing advanced single cell technologies. Our primary interest lies in understanding how heterogenous gene expression in clock neurons leads to different rhythmic behaviors such as locomotor activity and sleep.

Systemic Imaging and Nervous System Disease Research Dr. Chenchen Pan has long been devoted in the research of tissue clearing and imaging technologies. The current main research directions include developing and optimizing whole-body tissue clearing and imaging techniques; systematic study of pathologies caused by neurodegenerative diseases; study of the interactions be...

Medicinal Chemical Biology Dr. Li Tan has been working on small molecule modulators and medicinal chemical biology over a decade. As a postdoc research fellow, he had successfully developed targeted inhibitors of important kinases, e.g., FGFRs, JAK3, TAK1 and DDR1. These kinases are either established or potential therapeutic targets; however, n...

Neurological Disorders Research The research focuses of Professor Wenyuan Wang’s laboratory are on utilizing induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSCs)-derived cells for disease modeling, Drug development, and Cell therapy. The fibroblast cells harboring disease-causal mutations from patients are reprogrammed to iPSCs and then differentiated into neuron...

Drug Design and Medicinal Chemistry Research The research of Professor Zhaoyin Wang focuses on the design and synthesis of small molecule drugs that target treating cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.

Dr. Hai Wei's lab Dr. Hai Wei’s lab are majorly using C.elegans as a model organism and interested in unraveling novel non-apoptotic differential roles of CED-3/caspase. Dr. Wei firstly discovered differential roles of CED-3/caspase in regulating pan-stress response, UV induced aging, and promoting serotonergic motor neuron neuroblast ...

Cell death and inflammatory diseases The research in Dr. Daichao Xu’s lab investigates proteins that can regulate both cell death and inflammation. Dr. Xu’s lab is revealing how these proteins contribute to aging-related disorders, inflammatory and degenerative diseases including: premature aging, Alzheimer’s disease, non-alcohol fatty liver disease, i...

Structural biology and neural macromolecule The research in Dr. Yu’s lab focuses on elucidating molecular mechanisms for the function of membrane signaling complexes in neuron. Membrane signaling complexes play fundamental roles in mediating signal transduction at synapses, transporting ions and small molecules across membrane and catalyzing enzymatic reactions...

Systemic neurodegeneration research The research in Zou’s lab focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying pathogenic events of neurodegenerative diseases and developing corresponding treatment strategies in cell-type specific manner. We are mainly focusing on exploring molecular regulators of cell death and neuroinflammation in differen...

Mass Spectrometry and Proteins Research Our research focuses on mass spectrometry based multidimensional proteomics and its application to a variety of chemical and biological questions, and their interfaces. We are particularly interested in 1) developing new strategies to analyze minor proteome and protein modifications; 2) using chemical proteomics-center...

Structure and Function of Biomolecules Professor Yixiao Zhang’s long-term passion is to use single-particle cryo-EM to answer challenging mechanistic questions. Biological macromolecules are of fundamental importance for cell physiology. Studies aimed at elucidating the mechanisms underlying the biological functions of these biomacromolecules are thus key ...

Protein Quality Control Neurodegenerative diseases, such as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease, are devastating lethal diseases that affect a large number of individuals in the aging population worldwide. The pathological accumulation of specific proteins with aberrant conformation plays a crucial ro...

Biocircuits The research of ZhouLab focuses on the dynamic process of single-cell aging and the design of biocircuits for cellular automation. Our goal is to develop cellular robotics by leveraging the design principles of cellular network topology to address challenges in disease treatment and biotechnological applications.

Mass Spectrometry and Metabolomics The research of Dr. Zheng-Jiang Zhu focuses on the development of mass spectrometry-based metabolomics and lipidomics technologies, and their applications in investigating the mechanisms of aging and aging-dependent diseases. Dr. Zhu has published >70 peer-reviewed papers on the prestigious journals including Nature Co...