Extracellular Vesicles/Exosomes Asia 2025

Andreas Möller, Professor, Director, JC STEM Lab of Personalized Cancer Medicine, Prince of Wales Hospital, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Andreas Möller Biographical Sketch

Professor Andreas Möller is a trained biochemist and cancer biologist, with >20 years’ experience in cancer research. He is Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, supported by the prestigious Global STEM Professor fellowship. In addition, he is the Director of the Jockey Club Laboratory of Precision Cancer Medicine at the Li Ka Shing Institute of Health Sciences. Previously, between 2012 and 2023, he led the Tumour Microenvironment Laboratory at the QIMRB Medical Research Institute, Brisbane, Australia. Professor Möller has a strong background in cancer cell biology, extracellular vesicle (EV) biology, hypoxia research, cancer metastasis and cancer immunology. He is Member of the Board of Directors of the International Society of Extracellular Vesicles since 2022, and since 2024 elected Executive Chair for Meetings and Programs as well as one of the founders and Executive Board Member of the Asia Pacific Societies of Extracellular Vesicles.

Danilo Tagle, Director, Office of Special Initiatives, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences at the NIH (NCATS)

Danilo Tagle Biographical Sketch

Dan Tagle is Director of the Office of Special Initiatives at NCATS where he many coordinates efforts towards development of disruptive technologies in translational research. He obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Genetics from Wayne State University School of Medicine. He was an NIH National Research Service Award postdoctoral fellow in Human Genetics at the University of Michigan. He has served on numerous committees, advisory boards, and editorial boards. He has authored many scientific publications and has garnered numerous awards, including more recently the Roscoe O. Brady Award for Innovation and Accomplishment, and the Henry J. Heimlich Award for Innovative Medicine.

Han Wei Hou, Associate Professor, School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University Singapore

Han Wei Hou Biographical Sketch

Dr. Han Wei Hou is an Associate Professor at the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE), and Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKCMedicine) at Nanyang Technological University Singapore (NTU). He is also an Adjunct Senior Research Scientist at Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH), and currently serves as the Assistant Chair (Students) at MAE. Dr. Hou received his BEng (First Class Hons) and PhD degree in Biomedical Engineering at the National University of Singapore in 2008 and 2012, respectively. Upon graduation, he did his postdoctoral training at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), and subsequently joined LKCMedicine as the inaugural LKCMedicine Postdoctoral Fellow in 2014. He started his research group at NTU (BioMicroSystems Laboratory, www.hwhoulab.com) in 2018 and his research interests include microfluidics blood diagnostics, organ-on-chips, and cell-based biomanufacturing. He has authored over 60 peer-reviewed journal publications and filed 15 patents/patent applications. His recent research awards and accolades include World's Top 2% Scientists (By Stanford University) (2023, 2024), International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE) Early Career Award (2022), NTU College of Engineering Research – Young Faculty Special Mention (2022), and International Society for Advancement of Cytometry (ISAC) Innovators (2021).

Hang Hubert Yin, Professor, Tsinghua University

Hang Hubert Yin Biographical Sketch

Professor Hang Hubert Yin was born in Beijing in 1976. After studying for a bachelor's degree at Peking University, he received his PhD from Yale University in 2004 under the supervision of Professor Andrew Hamilton and then spent a post-doctoral period at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine with Professor William DeGrado. In 2018, Professor Yin joined the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Tsinghua University as a founding Deputy Dean. Prior to joining Tsinghua, he was a tenured faculty member of the University of Colorado Boulder. His research interests lie at the interface of chemistry, biology, and engineering with particular focuses on structure-based drug design, extracellular vesicles, cell signaling biochemistry, biotechnology development, and membrane protein simulations. Professor Yin is a recipient of many accolades for his research in chemical biology and drug discovery, including the Wu Jieping-Paul Janssen Medical & Pharmaceutical Award, American Chemical Society David W. Robertson Award for Excellence in Medicinal Chemistry, OKeanos-CAPA Senior Investigator Award, National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, Beijing Outstanding Young Scientist, CAPA Distinguished Junior Faculty Award, NSF CAREER Award, AACR Gertrude B. Elion Cancer Research Award, Sidney Kimmel Scholars Award, and HHMI Collaborative Innovation Award among others. Professor Yin’s is currently serving as a member of the Academic Committee of Tsinghua University, a Senior Advisor to the ISEV Board, the Editor-in-Chief of Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry Letters, and a Deputy Editor of the Journal of Extracellular Vesicles.

Mei He, Associate Professor, University of Florida

Mei He Biographical Sketch

Dr. He is an associate professor from the Department of Pharmaceutics, College of Pharmacy at the University of Florida. She obtained her PhD degree from the University of Alberta and postdoc training from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. He is the Editorial Board member of Pharmaceutics and AAPS Scientific Programming Committee Track Leader, as well as the Advisory Board Member of journal Lab on Chip (LOC). Her journal review efforts have been recognized as the Outstanding Reviewers in 2018, 2020, and 2021 from the LOC Royal Society of Chemistry. Dr. He Received NIH Maximizing Investigator’s Research Award for Early Stage Investigators in 2019, and she also received the LOC Emerging Investigator Award in 2019. Her multiple publications received the Most Download Articles of 2016 (LOC), the Featured Cover Story of 2018 (LOC), Technology Readers Choice Award of 2018 (SLAS), and Top 100 Read Articles of 2019 (Scientific Reports from Nature Publishing Group). Her recent publication is appeared in the journal of Nature Biomedical Engineering and highlighted as the Editorial Story. Dr. He research brings in novel technology platforms for differentiating, isolating, and intravesicular loading exosomes precisely, which presents a new way for developing precision medicine Dr. He’s innovation leads to 17 pending and issued patents and have been licensed by multiple companies and commercialized on the market. Particularly, she founded a few startup companies for advancing the innovative exosome research.

Nao Nishida-Aoki, Assistant Professor, Waseda Institute for Advanced Studies (WIAS), Waseda University

Nao Nishida-Aoki Biographical Sketch

Nao Nishida-Aoki is an Assistant Professor at Waseda Institute for Advanced Study (WIAS) since 2022, focusing on extracellular vesicle (EV)-mediated communication between cancer and host cells within physiological tumor microenvironments. She received her Ph.D. from Kyoto University in 2014, studying transcriptional regulation in stress-tolerant yeast. Then she joined National Cancer Center Research Institute (Tokyo, Japan) as a postdoctoral fellow, demonstrating the therapeutic potential of targeting cancer-derived EVs in breast cancer metastasis. At Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Seattle, WA, USA), she explored molecular mechanisms of cancer-host cell interactions in a physiological tissue context, utilizing organotypic tumor tissue slices and in vitro tumor-associated macrophage polarization model. She was supported by JSPS research fellowships during her training and currently funded by KAKENHI and several private foundations. She has served as a committee member of the Japanese Society for Extracellular Vesicles (JSEV) since 2022.

Noah Malmstadt, Professor, Mork Family Dept. of Chemical Engineering & Materials Science, University of Southern California

Noah Malmstadt Biographical Sketch

Noah Malmstadt is Professor at the University of Southern California. He received a BS in Chemical Engineering from Caltech and a PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Washington. Following postdoctoral work at UCLA, he joined the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at USC in 2007. Malmstadt is the recipient of a 2012 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator award. His research focuses on microfluidic strategies to facilitate material fabrication and biophysical analysis. He has pioneered the integration of ionic liquids as solvents in droplet microreactors and the application of microfluidic systems to synthesizing biomimetic cell membranes. Microfluidic analytical techniques he has developed include methods for measuring the permeability of cell membranes to druglike molecules and techniques for measuring ionic currents through membrane proteins.

Takahiro Ochiya, Distinguished Professor, Tokyo Medical University

Takahiro Ochiya Biographical Sketch

Dr. Takahiro Ochiya was a Chief of Division of Molecular and Cellular Medicine at the National Cancer Center Research Institute, Tokyo since 2011 and he is currently appointed as professor of Tokyo Medical University (since 2018). After he got Ph.D. in 1988 in Osaka University and then went to do a post-doc at La Jolla Cancer Research (The SF Burnham Institute for Medical Research), CA, USA. Dr. Ochiya’s lab focuses the development of novel animal models, methods, and strategies to study cancer development and metastasis. Especially, current focuses are siRNA- and microRNA-based diagnosis and therapy of cancer. He is also one of the top scientist in the study of extracellular vesicles (EV). Dr. Ochiya is awarded as web of science top 1% highly cited researchers (HCR) 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 and carries President of Japanese Society of Extracellular Vesicles (JSEV) since 2014.

Tony Jun Huang, William Bevan Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Duke University

Tony Jun Huang Biographical Sketch

Tony Jun Huang is the William Bevan Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Duke University. Previously, he was a professor and the Huck Distinguished Chair in Bioengineering Science and Mechanics at The Pennsylvania State University. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2005. His research focuses on acoustofluidics, optofluidics, and micro/nano systems for biomedical diagnostics and therapeutics. He has authored or co-authored over 300 peer-reviewed journal articles, which have been cited more than 37,000 times, as documented by Google Scholar (h-index: 102), and holds 26 issued or pending patents. Prof. Huang is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (USA) and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, as well as six professional societies: the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Institute of Physics (UK), and the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK). His contributions have earned him prestigious awards, including the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (2010), the Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award from the Society for Manufacturing Engineering (2012), the IEEE Sensors Council Technical Achievement Award (2014), the Analytical Chemistry Young Innovator Award from the American Chemical Society (2017), the Van Mow Medal from ASME (2019), and the Technical Achievement Award from the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (2019). In the last two consecutive years (2022-2023), he has been named to a global list of the most highly cited researchers (cross field) by Clarivate (Web of Science).