Dr Jia Li dedicated his career to drug development and translational research, especially targeting diseases with abnormal vasculature. He was the recipient of the prestigious NHMRC Gustav Nossal Award and Research for Excellence Award. He helped a research team from Centenary Institute/the University of Sydney to invent and patent the first-in-class drug for inhibiting vascular leak (CD5-2) in the world. This drug has shown promising effects in treating ischemia vascular diseases, solid tumours, diabetes and cerebral vascular disorder. These results were published in several top journals such as Blood, Plos Biology, Cancer Research and Diabetologia (cover paper). Due to these contributions, he was awarded the Cardiovascular Initiative Finalist Young Investigator Award at the University of Sydney.

After he moved to Macquarie University in 2019, Dr Li expanded his research to the area of nanomedicine and nano-delivery systems. His aim is to develop multi-targeted therapeutics for neurovascular and neurodegenerative diseases. He has made significant progress thus far with publishing several papers in prestigious journals, including Small, Science Advances and Advanced Materials.

Dr Jia Li has more than 20 papers. His work, with his colleagues at Centenary Institute, on drug discovery was highlighted by Science Translational Medicine as the Editors’ choice “A Step Closer to Therapy for Leaky Vessels” (https://stm.sciencemag.org/content /5/203/203ec152). In the last 5 years, He was invited to give oral presentations at several international/national conferences including the World Congress on Inflammation (2019), the Asia Pacific Vascular Biology Organisation Conference (APVBO 2017, 2019) and the Australia Vascular Biology Society Meeting (AVBS, 2017).