Lan Zhao

Biography

Lan Zhao is Professor of Experimental Medicine at Imperial College London. She is Academic Director of the Imperial College Biological Imaging Centre (BIC). Employing innovative experimental approaches, she leads a research programme directed at identifying novel drug targets for pulmonary hypertension and developing biomarkers for assessing response to therapy. She is recognized for establishing the importance of the cGMP signaling pathway in pulmonary vascular homeostasis which contributed to the identification of phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE5) as a key therapeutic target for pulmonary hypertension, as well as her recent work on HDAC inhibitors and iron supplementation. Most recently, her research has led to a groundbreaking observation that zinc transporter, ZIP12, has a fundamental role in mammalian pulmonary vascular homeostasis and offers a new drug target for pulmonary hypertension (Nature 2015). To overcome the challenge of evaluating interventions for pulmonary hypertension on the pathology of the disease, she has applied cutting edge imaging methodology, establishing this as an effective tool for disease assessment with enormous potential for stratified medicine. Professor Zhao leads a collaborative biomarker research program on pulmonary hypertension with China, supported by the Royal society, Pulmonary Vascular Research Institute (PVRI), Chinese National Program and Natural Science Foundation, as well as the ECCPS Tibet High Altitude Research Program. Since 2006, she has organized an education program every year with Chinese Medical Society and Chinese Thoracic Society to promote pulmonary hypertension research in China

Research Interest

pulmonary hypertension