Vice President, Preclinical and Translational Development

Lan has 20 years of experience in cancer research, drug discovery and translational sciences in biotech industry and academia. Lan started his career as a faculty member at Univ. Massachusetts Medical school studying signaling pathways in cancer. He then joined Blueprint Medicines and later Foghorn therapeutics, both at early stages. At Blueprint, Lan started an ALK2 drug discovery program to treat a rare genetic disease FOP and eventually delivered BLU-782 which is now poised for phase II clinical development. At Foghorn therapeutics, Lan led several drug discovery efforts targeting the BAF chromatin remodeling complex and advanced FHD-286 into a Phase I clinical trial. In both companies, the assets developed by Lan’s team also resulted in partnership deals with major pharmaceutical companies such as Alexion and Eli Lily/LOXO. More recently, Lan led the translational medicine function at Ikena Oncology, working on targeted and immuno-oncology programs in early clinical development.

Lan studied biochemistry at Fudan University in China and Dalhousie University in Canada before receiving a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences from University of California at San Diego. As a Damon Runyon fellow Lan did his postdoctoral work on TGF-beta at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Lan has authored more than 25 scientific papers many in high impact journals.