Co-Founder, Scientific Team
Dr. Xian is Chief Science Officer of Tract Bio and oversees research and development for drug discovery and regenerative medicine. She is also Professor of Cancer Biology at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Charlotte, North Carolina. Before moving her laboratory to Charlotte, Dr. Xian was a Professor of Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Houston Stem Cell Center and a Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas scholar in cancer research. Her work in Houston focused on developing novel therapies that target pathogenic stem cells to treat chronic inflammatory diseases and cancer. Dr. Xian received her doctorate in Molecular Genetics from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. In her first postdoctoral position, she studied breast cancer stem cells via "organoids" with Dr. Jeffery Rosen at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Dr. Xian also worked with Dr. Christopher Crum at Harvard’s Brigham and Women's Hospital, where she made remarkable progress in cloning the stem cells of ovarian cancer. This work led directly to her developing stem cell cloning technologies that have the potential to close the gap in understanding and targeting cancer and inflammatory diseases.
