Xiao Tian

Xiao Tian is an Assistant Professor in the Center for Neurologic Diseases and the Cancer Genome and Epigenetics Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute. He opened the Tian lab in January 2024 to understand the fundamental biology of aging and its contribution to age-related diseases. He joined SBP after his postdoctoral training in Dr. David Sinclair’s lab at Harvard Medical School, where he co-wrote the Information Theory of Aging. He obtained his PhD from the University of Rochester, where he worked with Dr. Vera Gorbunova to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying longevity and cancer resistance in long-lived species. His work includes identifying the first anti-cancer and longevity mechanism of naked mole rats, high-molecular-mass hyaluronan (Tian et al., Nature 2013), and discovering that DNA double-strand break repair is a molecular basis of exceptional longevity (Tian et al., Cell 2019). In his own lab, he aims to understand the epigenetic causes of aging and how physiological aging transitions to pathological aging. At the celebration, he will present his work on brain reprogramming.