Credit:
Will Ludwig/C&EN/Sam Falconer/Chao Wang
Vitals
Current affiliation: Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology
Age: 33
PhD alma mater: Stanford University
If I were an element, I’d be: “Y [yttrium]. Be rare (it’s a rare earth element), be useful, and keep asking Y!”
My favorite book is: “The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future. It’s a book on the history of venture capital. I think running a lab is like being a venture capitalist, investing in high-risk, high-reward projects and finding the right people to work with.”
As a graduate student, Shuo Han would put on his headphones and listen to Mandarin and Korean pop music while he pipetted. That way, he says, “I could do two of my favorite things at the same time.”
Now, as a principal investigator at the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Han jokes with his students that being a scientist is a lot like being a pop star. Publishing a paper is akin to releasing an album; you go on tour to promote your work at conferences; and most of all, you have to blend collaboration with creativity to stand out.
Creativity is a signature of Han’s scientific style. His first major accomplishment as an independent researcher was a technique that turns proximity labeling into a potential therapy. Scientists typically use proximity labeling to chemically tag all the biomolecules in the neighborhood of a molecule of interest for later identification. In a new twist, Han uses it to pull together proteins found on the surface of a living cell, driving the immune system to better detect and destroy cancer cells.
In designing this tool, Han drew from his training in chemical biology and immunology. After a childhood spent crisscrossing the Pacific—his father, also a chemist, moved the family from China to the US for work when Han was 11—he was an undergraduate student at Tsinghua University when he got excited about a paper on proximity labeling to understand mitochondria by prominent chemical biologist Alice Ting.
Han sent Ting an email about the possibilities of the technology, which was then new. He didn’t really expect a response—but she replied, and the correspondence eventually led to an invitation to join her lab for graduate school.
Once there, according to fellow Ting lab alumnus Peng Zou, “Shuo started applying proximity labeling to solve very important biological problems.” In one study, Zou noted, Han and a biologist colleague labeled cell-surface proteins in developing fruit fly brains.
“In a single set of experiments, they covered pretty much all the key developmental biology important marker proteins that had been painstakingly accumulated over the decades,” Zou says.
After postdoctoral studies in the lab of developmental and cancer biologist Philip Beachy, Han founded his own lab in Shanghai. A chemist among biochemists, he says his colleagues routinely expose him to unsolved problems. He learned from immunologists, for instance, that antigen density on a cell’s surface determines how well it engages and activates immune cells—which determines the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapy. “When I first learned this, it almost immediately clicked with what we’ve been doing with labeling,” Han says. “At the end of the day, what we’re creating with a proximity labeling reaction is a dense patch of molecules.”
To create this molecular patch on a cell surface, Han and his trainees introduce a nanoparticle catalyst made of porphyrin and zirconium oxide. When activated by red light or by ultrasound, the nanozyme catalyzes a reaction between nearby tyrosine or histidine residues, respectively, and an immunogenic substrate. That labels molecules on the cancer cell’s surface, and researchers can use adapter molecules called bispecific T-cell engagers to bring the new cluster to the attention of the immune system. In mice, the treatment trains T cells to recognize cancer cells, even those that have not been labeled, well enough to clear a tumor.
Whether this method can work in humans remains to be seen. For one, Han suspects that the treatment’s complexity and its reliance on nanozymes may give regulators pause. Still, his colleagues say it’s a dazzling display of creativity; Han pulled inspiration from multiple fields into a solution that, Zou says, “only Shuo could do.”
Once again, Han has a musical analogy to offer. Just as his favorite pop star, Jay Chou, combines traits of traditional Chinese and Western music, he says he wants to combine influences from many disciplines. “That’s the kind of talent that I really want to incorporate into my science: to be able to bring together these different disciplines . . . toward solving a problem, toward creating a piece of melody that would be useful.”
Correction:
This story was updated on June 26, 2026, to correct the description of Philip Beachy’s expertise. He is a developmental and cancer biologist, not an immunologist.
Laurel Oldach is a senior editor and life sciences reporter at C&EN.
