Xiaolei Su, PhD

Dr. Xiaolei Su obtained his B.S. at Peking University. As a graduate student at Harvard, he revealed a mechanism of microtubule length regulation by kinesin-8 motors under the mentorship of David Pellman. Then he joined Ron Vale's Lab at UCSF as a postdoc fellow. His work led to the discovery that phase separation of membrane-associated proteins can promote T cell activation. As an assistant professor at Yale, Dr. Su is leading a team to explore membrane remodeling and signal transduction during immune responses. They combined in vitro reconstitution with live cell imaging to understand how biomolecular condensates regulate immune signaling. They also investigated the molecular pathways underlying CAR T activation and designed CARs with new signaling functions targeting blood, skin, and lung cancers.