Liqun leads brain shuttle compound discovery and brain-targeted therapeutics discovery for the Wyss Institute’s Brain Targeting Program (BTP), an initiative that aims to address the urgent and unmet needs for drug delivery to treat brain diseases. Liqun’s work focuses on two main areas. The first is discovery and validation of novel antibody (Ab) shuttle compounds that can greatly enhance the transport of therapeutics across the BBB to the brain. The second is development of novel therapeutics for a variety of brain diseases. By combining the BTP’s brain shuttles with new therapeutics, we aim to develop novel, efficient brain-targeted drugs that significantly improve therapeutic efficacy for brain diseases. Liqun leads shuttle compound and therapeutic colloborations with academic collaborators and industry sponsors and partners. She also supervises a team for in vitro and in vivo assay development, humanized transgenic mouse models generation and breeding, and compound testing and validation.
Prior to joining the Wyss, Liqun worked in both academia and in industry. She gained extensive experience in genetics, neuroscience, neurodegenerative diseases, product development, and assay development. Liqun was a postdocotoral fellow and then Research Associate in the lab of Mel Feany at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She contributed signicantly to mechanistic studies and therapeutics discoveries for several neurodegenerative diseases, including Alexander disease, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. Liqun then worked in industry, focusing on product development of antibodies and immunoassays for the neuroscience portfolio at BioLegend. During her time at BioLegend, she pursued collaborations with external partners such as the Michael J. Fox foundation to advance diagnositic and therapeutic development for neurodegenerative diseases.
Liqun obtained her Ph.D. degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology from University of Kentucky and her B.S. degree from Fudan University in China.