Overview

Xiaochu Ma, Ph.D., focuses her practice on global patent prosecution and portfolio management in the areas of life sciences, including cell biology, microbiology, biochemistry, molecular biology, and biophysics.

Specifically, Xiaochu is experienced in technical areas including antibody development and therapeutics, disease diagnosis such as biomarker screening platforms and liquid biopsy technologies, high-throughput sequencing technologies, vaccine development, gene editing technologies, RNA interference, biomaterials and medical devices, stem cell technologies, anti-cancer therapeutics, and drug development.

Xiaochu’s graduate work focused on the understanding of the mechanism of HIV-1 infection. Using a single molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer (smFRET) technique, her work revealed a critical intermediate step during the virus's entry into host cells and identified several conformational epitopes for AIDS vaccine design.

While at graduate school, Xiaochu was also a technology transfer intern at the office of cooperative research of Yale University, where she worked on marketing and commercialization of innovations.

Pro bono activities

Massachusetts Science & Engineering Fair; volunteer reviewer