Dr. Lingyin Li is a professor in the Biochemistry Department and ChEM-H Institute at Stanford. She is also a core investigator of the Arc Institute. Her lab works on understanding biochemical mechanisms of the immunotransmitter cGAMP and harnessing it to treat cancer and autoimmunity. She majored in chemistry at University of Science and Technology of China and graduated with a B. En in 2003. She then trained with Dr. Laura Kiessling, a pioneer in chemical biology, at University of Wisconsin-Madison and graduated with a Ph.D in chemistry in 2010. She obtained her postdoctoral training with Dr. Timothy Mitchison at Harvard Medical School, who introduced her to the field of chemical immunology. She started her lab at Stanford in 2015.

The Li lab uses chemical biology to uncover biochemical mechanisms in innate immunity and, in parallel, develop therapeutic hypotheses and lead compounds. Innate immune pathways as the first line of defense against pathogens present many exciting opportunities for chemical biologists. These pathways are a rich source of novel chemistry: they involve diverse molecular patterns in pathogens, little-explored second messengers, and drugs with poorly understood mechanism. Activation of innate immunity is a proven therapeutic strategy for vaccination, viral infection, and cancer, while inhibition is a strategy for treating autoimmune diseases and sterile inflammation. To date, however, most modulators of innate immunity are broad, non-specific, and poorly characterized, such as killed bacteria, alum crystals, and steroids. The Li lab seeks to improve understanding of these pathways and facilitate the development of more precise drugs for preventing or treating specific diseases.