Chi-Hao Luan

University of Alabama at Birmingham, High Throughput Biology (United States)

Papers

Total Citations

136

H-Index

About

Chi-Hao Luan is a biochemist and structural biologist whose research has significantly advanced high-throughput methodologies for recombinant protein expression and structural proteomics. Working at the intersection of molecular biology and drug discovery, Luan has dedicated much of his career to solving one of the field's most persistent bottlenecks: efficiently producing soluble, stable proteins for structural and functional studies. His most influential contribution, a 2004 paper on high-throughput expression of *C. elegans* proteins (103 citations), established foundational proteome-scale approaches using the nematode as a model organism, enabling researchers worldwide to accelerate both basic biological investigations and therapeutic development. Building on this work, Luan developed improved domain-selection and cloning strategies for higher eukaryotic proteins, addressing the persistent challenge of expressing complex proteins in stable, functional forms. Luan further expanded his toolkit into ligand discovery, contributing methodology around Fluorescence Thermal Shift Analysis for screening potential drug candidates — a technique increasingly valuable in early-stage pharmaceutical research. His 2008 work on eukaryotic high-throughput platforms reinforced his commitment to democratizing structural proteomics through scalable, parallelized workflows. Across his career, Luan's practical innovations have meaningfully equipped structural biologists with the tools needed to decode protein architecture at scale.