Director, Marcus Natural Product Laboratory

Research Associate

Dr. Cao received his BS in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Hubei College of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in 1983. He has taught and conducted research at Hubei College of TCM (Wuhan, China), China Pharmaceutical University (Nanjing, China), and Gifu Pharmaceutical University (Gifu, Japan; sent by the China Ministry of Health as a recipient of Sasagawa Fellowship) before moving to the Republic of Singapore for his Doctorate at the Department of Chemistry, the National University of Singapore. After his graduate study in 1998 Dr. Cao joined MerLion Pharmaceuticals Pte Ltd, a leading natural product based research and development company headquartered in Singapore. In April 2003, Dr. Cao joined Prof. David Kingston's Laboratory at Virginia Tech Department of Chemistry, which has a strong tradition of natural products research. Dr. Cao was a senior Research Fellow in the Kingston Laboratory until accepting his post at Harvard Medical School in December 2008. Dr. Cao's research interests include drug discovery from natural sources, natural product research, and the Chinese Materia Medica. In addition to patent applications, he has authored over 50 publications in peer-reviewed English journals.