Yan Wu

Aberrant kinase activity drives tumorigenesis, but most kinase inhibitors are developed primarily for tumors outside the brain due to the incapability of many drugs to cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB), resulting in limited drug treatment options for brain tumors. Given the unmet medical needs in brain tumor treatment and the challenges in optimizing BBB-permeable drugs, I am working on engineering Kinase-Modulated Bioluminescent Indicators (KiMBIs) whose bioluminescent signals are controlled by kinase activity. Our goal is to establish a generalizable approach to rapidly and non-invasively visualize the efficacy of kinase inhibitors in the brain and greatly aid the discovery of effective treatments that target aberrant kinase signaling.