Research Summary

The Xiao lab develops chemical biology and medicinal chemistry technologies to probe, reprogram, and treat complex biological systems, spanning cancer-targeted medicines, genetic code expansion with noncanonical amino acids, photoactivatable/NIR-II probes for deep-tissue imaging, and recent high-throughput Sequence Display approaches that integrate machine learning and protein language models to accelerate protein evolution for biomedical applications.

Keywords

Chemical biology; medicinal chemistry, machine learning; protein evolution; molecular imaging

Biography

Han Xiao is the Director of the SynthX Center and a Professor in the Departments of Chemistry, Biosciences, and Bioengineering at Rice University, where his laboratory develops chemical biology and bioengineering technologies to probe, reprogram, and treat complex biological systems. He is a CPRIT Scholar in Cancer Research and received his B.S. in Chemistry with an honors degree in physical science from the University of Science and Technology of China, completed his Ph.D. at The Scripps Research Institute with Peter G. Schultz, and completed postdoctoral training at Stanford University with Carolyn R. Bertozzi. Since launching his independent laboratory at Rice in 2017, Han has emerged as a leader in the bone delivery of therapeutics, pioneering bone-targeted biologics, antibody-drug conjugates, and immune-modulating therapies designed to concentrate treatment in the bone microenvironment; he also co-found Osteologics Therapeutics, a Curie.Bio-backed company translating this platform toward new medicines for bone metastasis and other skeletal diseases. His group is also at the forefront of Sequence Display technology, which enables unbiased, large-scale protein sequence-activity datasets that can be integrated with machine learning and protein language models to accelerate protein evolution and biomedical discovery. In parallel, he leads large-scale, multi-institutional efforts, including a recent $18 million ARPA-H award focused on advanced imaging and diagnostics for the lymphatic system. His honors include the DoD Breast Cancer Research Program Breakthrough Award (Level 2), the NIH Maximizing Investigators' Research Award, the Norman Hackerman-Welch Young Investigator Award, and the David W. Robertson Award for Excellence in Medicinal Chemistry.

Research News

• EurekAlert News: Scientists uncover new method to generate protein datasets for training AI
• Nature Reviews Comments: Illuminating protein microenvironments with rotor-based fluorescent amino acids
• PNAS commentary: Unraveling the impact of a glyco-immune checkpoint in bone metastasis
• Rice News: Rice researchers bioengineer mussel-inspired sticky microorganisms to help break down plastic waste
• The Scientist: Homing Technology Delivers Therapy to Cancerous Bone