Our Team

Background

Lan Yao earned her PhD in Biophysics from the University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI, USA (and also received postdoctoral training there). She has 15 years of experience in biophysical and biomedical research, with focus on tumor-targeting membrane active peptide (pH-Low Insertion Peptide, or pHLIP) and drug delivery. Yao joined Binghamton University as a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics in 2011. As the Co-Investigator in the NIH-funded R15 project titled 'Rational Design of pHLIPs for Cargo Delivery', Yao led the development of new pHLIP variants with improved pH response at tumor acidity, and studied cargo delivery using pHLIP as the drug carrier. In addition, as one of the three original inventors, Yao developed a new type of acidosis-activated small molecule prodrug to improve the therapeutic index of doxorubicin for targeted cancer chemotherapy. Yao has extensive expertise in membrane biophysics, cell culture, fluorescence microscopy, whole-body fluorescence imaging in small animals, fluorescence spectroscopy, circular dichroism spectroscopy, UV-VIS spectrophotometry, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS). She also has experience in confocal microscope, cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), surface-enhanced laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (SELDI TOF-MS), and atomic force microscopy (AFM). Dr. Yao joined the Analytical and Diagnostics Laboratory in 2022.