Yujun Cai, PhD

Dr. Cai joined Yale School of Medicine from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston. Before moving to Boston, he was a Postdoctoral Associate and then a junior faculty in the Aab Cardiovascular Research Institute at the University of Rochester.

Dr. Cai is a Principal Investigator at Yale. His overall research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms of cyclic nucleotide signaling in the pathogenesis of arterial and venous disorders. He has a longstanding interest in investigating the function, molecular mechanisms, and therapeutic potential of phosphodiesterase (PDE) in cardiovascular diseases. Dr. Cai has expertise in the areas of inflammation, extracellular matrix, and lysosome function related to vascular diseases. He uses multiple approaches including RNA-Seq/bioinformatics, proteomics, in vitro primary cell culture, state-of-art in vivo rodent surgical models of diseases, human specimens from patients, and transgenic mice, and collaborates with vascular biologists, vascular surgeons, bioengineers, gene/drug delivery experts, and bioinformatics experts to achieve his research goals.

Dr. Cai’s research is supported by NIH R01 and the AHA Transformational Project Award. His research has been published in prestigious journals such as Circulation Research. In addition to scientific progress, Dr. Cai is also mentoring postdoctoral fellows, clinical fellows, and undergraduate students.