Ee Phie Tan

Ee Phie Tan, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology and a member of the Coit Center for Longevity and Neurotherapeutics. The Tan Laboratory studies lipophagy, the selective autophagic degradation of lipid droplets. The lab’s work centers on defining the molecular mechanisms of lipophagy, discovering small-molecule therapeutics that target this pathway, developing new lipophagy assays, and determining how lipophagy contributes to aging and neurodegenerative disease.

Dr. Tan completed postdoctoral training at Sanford Burnham Prebys, where she studied the fundamentals of selective autophagy in aging with support from American Diabetes Association and American Heart Association fellowships. She then moved to Scripps Research for a second postdoctoral fellowship focused on translational science in neurodegeneration and drug discovery, supported first by a California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) grant and subsequently by an NIH/NIA K99 award. Her current research is supported by an NIH/NIA R00 award and the R. Ken Coit College of Pharmacy start-up fund.

Areas of Research

• Lipophagy and selective autophagy
• Autophagy mechanisms in aging
• Neurodegeneration and age-related disease
• Small-molecule drug discovery
• Assay development for lipophagy
• Lipid droplet biology and lipid homeostasis
• Chemical and molecular biology

Types of Research

• Laboratory-based research
• Translational research
• Drug discovery