Yuan Li

Yuan-Na Lin is a Research Scholar in the Department of Oncology, Lombardi Cancer Center at Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington DC. Dr. Lin is a board-certified visceral surgeon at University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany, where she has received her MD and Ph.D.

During her surgical residency, Dr. Lin has been working on the role of actin binding proteins in cancer cell development and metastasis in an interdisciplinary and translational approach. She has been focusing on the formins mDia1 and mDia3 in colon cancer metastasis and chromosomal instability by modulation of the cytoskeleton. She then moved to Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA, as a DFG (German Research Funding Organization) Research Scholar. Here, she set up an innovative 3D tumor spheroid co-culture platform to examine tumor cell – immune cell interactions, in order to reveal new resistance mechanisms towards T-cell mediated tumor cell killing.

As a clinician, Dr. Lin is particularly interested in bridging basic research with clinical application. Her ultimate goal is to improve immunotherapeutic treatment approaches in patients with pancreatic cancer.