Xiaojun (Lance) Lian

Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Xiaojun (Lance) Lian

Research Summary

Human Stem Cell Engineering; Genome Editing via CRISPR-Cas9; Epigenome Editing and Epigenetics.

Huck Graduate Students

Huck Affiliations

Links

Most Recent Publications

Forward programming of hPSCs to neutrophils using chemically defined media

Hayley E. Hall, Xiaoping Bao, Cheng Dong, Xiaojun Lance Lian, 2025, Stem Cell Research and Therapy

Bioprinted optoelectronically active cardiac tissues

Faheem Ershad, Zhoulyu Rao, Sushila Maharajan, Fernanda C.Paccola Mesquita, Junkyu Ha, Lei Gonzalez, Tahir Haideri, Ernesto Curty Da Costa, Angel Moctezuma-Ramirez, Yuqi Wang, Seonmin Jang, Yuntao Lu, Shubham Patel, Xiaoyang Wang, Yifan Tao, Joshua Weygant, Carlos Ezio Garciamendez-Mijares, Luis Carlos Orrantia Clark, Muhammad Zubair, Xiaojun Lance Lian, Abdelmotagaly Elgalad, Jian Yang, Camila Hochman-Mendez, Yu Shrike Zhang, Cunjiang Yu, 2025, Science advances

Ultrathin rubbery bio-optoelectronic stimulators for untethered cardiac stimulation

Zhoulyu Rao, Faheem Ershad, Ying Shi Guan, Fernanda C. Paccola Mesquita, Ernesto Curty da Costa, Marco A. Morales-Garza, Angel Moctezuma-Ramirez, Bin Kan, Yuntao Lu, Shubham Patel, Hyunseok Shim, Kuan Cheng, Wenjie Wu, Tahir Haideri, Xiaojun Lance Lian, Alamgir Karim, Jian Yang, Abdelmotagaly Elgalad, Camila Hochman-Mendez, Cunjiang Yu, 2024, Science advances

Soft Polyethylene Glycol Hydrogels Support Human PSC Pluripotency and Morphogenesis

Michael P. Seitz, Yuanhui Song, Xiaojun Lance Lian, Zhen Ma, Era Jain, 2024, ACS Biomaterials Science and Engineering on p. 4525-4540

MAGIK: A rapid and efficient method to create lineage-specific reporters in human pluripotent stem cells

Tahir Haideri, Jirong Lin, Xiaoping Bao, Xiaojun Lance Lian, 2024, Stem Cell Reports on p. 744-757

Direct programming of human pluripotent stem cells into endothelial progenitors with SOX17 and FGF2

Michael W. Ream, Lauren N. Randolph, Yuqian Jiang, Yun Chang, Xiaoping Bao, Xiaojun Lance Lian, 2024, Stem Cell Reports on p. 579-595

A drug-selectable acoustic reporter gene system for human cell ultrasound imaging

Alessandro R. Howells, Phoebe J. Welch, John Kim, Craig R. Forest, Chengzhi Shi, Xiaojun Lance Lian, 2024, Bioengineering and Translational Medicine

CAR-neutrophil mediated delivery of tumor-microenvironment responsive nanodrugs for glioblastoma chemo-immunotherapy

Yun Chang, Xuechao Cai, Ramizah Syahirah, Yuxing Yao, Yang Xu, Gyuhyung Jin, Vijesh J. Bhute, Sandra Torregrosa-Allen, Bennett D. Elzey, You Yeon Won, Qing Deng, Xiaojun Lance Lian, Xiaoguang Wang, Omolola Eniola-Adefeso, Xiaoping Bao, 2023, Nature Communications

Engineered human pluripotent stem cell-derived natural killer cells with PD-L1 responsive immunological memory for enhanced immunotherapeutic efficacy

Yun Chang, Gyuhyung Jin, Weichuan Luo, Qian Luo, Juhyung Jung, Sydney N. Hummel, Sandra Torregrosa-Allen, Bennett D. Elzey, Philip S. Low, Xiaojun Lance Lian, Xiaoping Bao, 2023, Bioactive Materials on p. 168-180

Engineered Artificial Human Neutrophils Exhibit Mature Functional Performance

Yun Chang, Sydney N. Hummel, Monique N. Watson, Gyuhyung Jin, Xiaojun Lance Lian, Xiaoping Bao, 2023, ACS Synthetic Biology on p. 2262-2270

Most-Cited Papers

Laser-induced graphene non-enzymatic glucose sensors for on-body measurements

Jian Yang, Jia Zhu, Shangbin Liu, Zhihui Hu, Xianzhe Zhang, Ning Yi, Kairui Tang, Michael Dexheimer, Xiaojun Lian, Q Wang, J Yang, Jennifer Gray, Huanyu Cheng, 2021, Biosensors and Bioelectronics on p. 113606

Chemically defined, albumin-free human cardiomyocyte generation

Xiaojun Lian, Xiaoping Bao, Misha Zilberter, Mattias Westman, André Fisahn, Cheston Hsiao, Laurie B. Hazeltine, Kaitlin K. Dunn, Timothy J. Kamp, Sean P. Palecek, 2015, Nature Methods on p. 595-596

CAR-neutrophil mediated delivery of tumor-microenvironment responsive nanodrugs for glioblastoma chemo-immunotherapy

Yun Chang, Xuechao Cai, Ramizah Syahirah, Yuxing Yao, Yang Xu, Gyuhyung Jin, Vijesh J. Bhute, Sandra Torregrosa-Allen, Bennett D. Elzey, You Yeon Won, Qing Deng, Xiaojun Lance Lian, Xiaoguang Wang, Omolola Eniola-Adefeso, Xiaoping Bao, 2023, Nature Communications

Sequence-Specific Recognition of HIV-1 DNA with Solid-State CRISPR-Cas12a-Assisted Nanopores (SCAN)

Reza Nouri, Yuqian Jiang, Xiaojun Lance Lian, Weihua Guan, 2020, ACS Sensors on p. 1273-1280

Long-term self-renewing human epicardial cells generated from pluripotent stem cells under defined xeno-free conditions

Xiaoping Bao, Xiaojun Lian, Timothy A. Hacker, Eric G. Schmuck, Tongcheng Qian, Vijesh J. Bhute, Tianxiao Han, Mengxuan Shi, Lauren Drowley, Alleyn T. Plowright, Qing Dong Wang, Marie Jose Goumans, Sean P. Palecek, 2017, Nature Biomedical Engineering

Chemically-defined albumin-free differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells to endothelial progenitor cells

Xiaoping Bao, Xiaojun Lian, Kaitlin K. Dunn, Mengxuan Shi, Tianxiao Han, Tongcheng Qian, Vijesh J. Bhute, Scott G. Canfield, Sean P. Palecek, 2015, Stem Cell Research on p. 122-129

Engineering chimeric antigen receptor neutrophils from human pluripotent stem cells for targeted cancer immunotherapy

Yun Chang, Ramizah Syahirah, Xuepeng Wang, Gyuhyung Jin, Sandra Torregrosa-Allen, Bennett D. Elzey, Sydney N. Hummel, Tianqi Wang, Can Li, Xiaojun Lian, Qing Deng, Hal E. Broxmeyer, Xiaoping Bao, 2022, Cell Reports

High-affinity mutant Interleukin-13 targeted CAR T cells enhance delivery of clickable biodegradable fluorescent nanoparticles to glioblastoma

Gloria Kim, Virginia Aragon-Sanabria, Lauren Randolph, Hali Jiang, Joshua Reynolds, Becky Webb, A Madhankumar, Xiaojun Lian, James R. Connor, Jian Yang, Cheng Dong, others, 2020, Bioactive Materials on p. 624--635

Detection of SARS-CoV-2 with Solid-State CRISPR-Cas12a-Assisted Nanopores

Reza Nouri, Yuqian Jiang, Zifan Tang, Xiaojun Lance Lian, Weihua Guan, 2021, Nano Letters on p. 8393-8400

Human pluripotent stem cell culture density modulates YAP signaling

Cheston Hsiao, Michael Lampe, Songkhun Nillasithanukroh, Wenqing Han, Xiaojun Lian, Sean P. Palecek, 2016, Biotechnology Journal on p. 662-675

News Articles Featuring Xiaojun (Lance) Lian

Nov 26, 2024

$2.6M grant to advance potential stem cell-based heart disease treatment

Combining stem cells and silicon nanowires in lab-grown tissue has shown promise as a step toward a new treatment for heart disease, the leading cause of death worldwide, according to a multi-institutional research team.

Full Article

Mar 21, 2024

Two keys needed to crack three locks for better engineered blood vessels

Blood vessels engineered from stem cells could help solve several research and clinical problems, from potentially providing a more comprehensive platform to screen if drug candidates can cross from the blood stream into the brain to developing lab-grown vascular tissue to support heart transplants.

Full Article

Feb 14, 2024

Lab Bench to Commercialization 2024 grant recipients announced

Four projects led by researchers in the Penn State Eberly College of Science have been selected to receive Lab Bench to Commercialization (LB2C) grants in 2024

Full Article

Sep 18, 2023

Novel approach to engineered cells may enable molecular medical imaging

A tiny molecular structure that looks like a bubble may be able to significantly improve medical imaging, according to a Penn State research team led by Lance Lian.

Full Article

Jun 20, 2023

Penn State researchers develop digital test to directly measure HIV viral load

A milliliter of blood contains about 15 individual drops. For a person with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), each drop of blood could contain anywhere from fewer than 20 copies of the virus to more than 500,000 copies.

Full Article

Dec 19, 2022

New 'Life From All Angles' video highlights Lance Lian’s stem cell research

The latest episode of "Life From All Angles," a YouTube series from the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, features Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering Xiaojun "Lance" Lian and his efforts to produce new cardiomyocytes to advance the effectiveness of stem cell differentiation.

Full Article

Sep 27, 2022

Game-changing stem cell engineer Lance Lian featured on Symbiotic podcast

Xiaojun “Lance” Lian, associate professor of biomedical engineering, is set to be the Symbiotic podcast’s final guest for 2022 when he appears at noon on Wednesday, Sept. 28 on the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences’ livestream page.

Full Article

Sep 09, 2022

Penn State-led team develops more efficient system for delivering CRISPR to stem cells

Modified mRNA (modRNA)-based CRISPR systems improve on the transfection and knockout efficiency of plasmid-based systems in human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs), a Penn State-led team of interdisciplinary researchers has found.

Full Article

Sep 07, 2022

New approach more than doubles stem cell editing efficiency, researchers report

A Penn State-led team of interdisciplinary researchers has developed techniques to improve the efficiency of CRISPR-Cas9, the genome editing technique that earned the Nobel Prize in 2020.

Full Article

Mar 07, 2022

Studying diseases with better delivery of gene-editing tools

Using gene-editing tools with stem cells can be challenging because their delivery into cells can be inefficient, time-consuming, or expensive. A Penn State-led team of interdisciplinary researchers has developed a method that improves the lifespan and efficiency of CRISPR gene-editing tools after delivery.

Full Article