A little bit about you:

My first postdoc training with Dr. Gordon Francis (2014-2017, Centre for Heart Lung Innovation) was accompanied by the arises of high throughput cell profiling technology, which I customized to characterize the origin of cholesterol-overloaded cells in the blood vessels. There we found an underestimated cholesterol pool accumulated in defective blood vessel cells that cannot be removed by the current lipid-lowering therapies. It challenges the dogma that atherosclerosis is a purely macrophage-driven disease, and growing evidence in the GWAS supports our hypothesis that intrinsic defects in the blood vessel cells contribute to anthogenesis. This study is a first step to identify these defects and design therapeutics to target them.

During my second postdoc training with Dr. Nicholas Leeper at Stanford University, I used a combination of multicolor lineage-tracing model, next-generation sequencing, and human genetics approaches to study atherosclerotic disease as a “tumor on the blood vessel”. One of the translational findings is that we can inhibit the progression of the atherosclerotic disease by an antibody in human cancer trials. It is achieved by promoting the appetite of immune cells to “eat” disease cells, which will be a research topic of my lab. During this time, I also exposed myself to spatial biology technologies invented at Stanford University and Silicon Valley. They enable a high-dimensional analysis of in situ protein and gene expressions to study cell-cell and cell-microenvironment interactions.

I am very excited to take these groundbreaking technologies to UBC and to leverage them to advance translational research in atherosclerotic disease. “Biological process + Biotechnology = Answers to clinically relevant questions” is the formula of my research. My new lab is located at the HLI and one of my first projects will be to integrate spatial biotechnology with other omics data to determine how cell functions are affected by their microenvironment in atherosclerotic disease, which decides the risks of cardiovascular events in patients. The long-term goals are to find therapeutic targets and to define biomarkers for better treatment of patients with atherosclerotic disease.

Who inspired you to pursue the career you have today?

My grandma who was a military surgeon. She and my family stimulated my interests in science and helped me realize my potentials.

What does a typical day look like for you and what are you currently working on?

My day usually starts by catching myself up on the latest science and non-science world news. I dedicate my mornings to research in my office and I spend afternoons in my lab. I am currently working on developing collaborative projects with industry partners and recruiting trainees who are interested in spatial biology.

What are you most looking forward to in your new role with Dept of Pathology?

Besides my own research topics, I am looking forward to connecting knowledge users of spatial biology to build a local community that helps accelerate translational research for people who are new to this nascent field. It will be in the format of webinars and blogs to share experience in experimental design and data analysis. I see it as a great opportunity to foster collaborations among research users of spatial biology in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.

What did you learn as a researcher the hard way?

Being a scientist is not just about knowing how to ‘do’ sciences, but more importantly how to ‘convey’ sciences to different audiences. Having English as a second language, I multiply my efforts and use every opportunity to practice on this part. Sometimes feedback from the audience (eg. paper and grant reviewers) may make you feel that the communication does not work, but at least you learn it in a hard way of how to improve for the next time.

What do you believe has been the greatest advancement for medicine in the last 50 years?

The evolution of high-throughput and high-dimension technologies greatly expand the information we can obtain from each experiment. These include the next generation sequencing that brings us to the era of ‘Omics’ and ‘Big data’, as well as the bioinformatic approaches to interpretate these data.

Going into the future, how do you believe medicine/science may change?

The next generation sequencing technologies are powerful tool to obtain robust information at multiple ‘omics’ levels. I believe that we are on our way to explore how to fully utilize these data and translate them to knowledge and applications that can advance the diagnosis and treatment of disease. It could be a creative way to connect genomic data to cellular functions so that we know how the GWAS risk factors contribute to disease, are they therapeutically targetable, and/or are they suitable biomarkers for personalized medicine. It could be a cost-efficient strategy to integrate ‘omics’ data to repurpose existing therapeutics for new applications and predict the efficiency and side effects of drug candidates. These are some of the trends medicine and science are following, which I vision my future research will contribute to. Going into the future, I think we will see, and we need more collaborative efforts among scientist, clinicians, and industries to implement knowledge translations of the ‘bigger data’ we are generating.

What is the most helpful advice you’ve received?

Be critical about the data you are trying to interpretate. Minimize the chances of garbage in and garbage out.

What motivates you at work?

The facts that science never stops, and new discoveries and technologies come to build on your prior knowledge motivate me every day. It is a lifelong learning process that keep you feeling rewarded.

What’s something that has surprised you about your chosen career path?

What have been studied or found before in your earlier research can turn out to be the answers or solutions to questions in other research fields years later. It is amazing to see how a career in research can be interactive and connected with career paths of others whom you have never met.

What profession might you have pursued, if not medicine?

When I was a kid my dream was to become an artist. Sometimes I am still picturing myself working part-time in my own gallery, and part-time in a cat café.