Lan Guo, PhD

I received my M.D. from medical school in 2000. Because of my strong interest in virology, I joined Professor Tao Hung’s lab for my PhD research. As a member of Chinese Academy of Engineering, Professor Hung is a well-recognized virologist in the research on the relationship between virus infection and Alzheimer’s Disease. Under the guidance of Professor Hung, we started getting interested in the research on Alzheimer’s Disease. During that time, my husband happened to be a neurologist specializing in Alzheimer’s Disease and he decided to devote his whole life to finding the mechanisms of the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s Disease. The shared vision is a strong bond between us. After graduation, I joined Dr. Shirley ShiDu Yan’s lab at Columbia University Medical Center to continue my research. Dr. Yan is a pioneer scientist to reveal Aß accumulation in neuronal mitochondria from Alzheimer’s Disease patients and mice models. Under Dr. Yan’s guidance, I began a journey to understanding how mitochondrial stress in Alzheimer’s Disease affects neuronal function. We have been working together for seven years and published many papers in well-recognized top journals including Nature Medicine and PNAS. I have received my first grant award from Alzheimer’s Association with Dr. Yan’s kind support. From 2013 to 2020, I have been working at the University of Texas at Dallas as a PI. I experienced difficulties to receive grant support independently and encountered a career bottleneck. I started realizing the importance of collaborating with clinicians on Alzheimer’s Disease to understand the disease. In 2020, I joined Higuchi Biosciences Center at the University of Kansas. KU is very supportive of research and provides the investigators with excellent grant services for the preparation of grant applications. KU also supplies plenty of internal funding to flourish the research. I have received New Faculty Research Development Fund to support my research. I also started a collaboration with KU Alzheimer’s Disease Center and was awarded a pilot study fund from KU AD center. Those funds are critical financial support for my team to collect preliminary data for the application of awarded BrightFocus fund. Finally, I would like to appreciate the support and help from my mentors, collaborators, and the institutions I have been working at. I also would like to thank the love and support from my parents, my husband, and our children. They are always my inspiration.