University of Florida · PharmacologyThe Actino Lab
Ben Shen · Gainesville, Florida
Research Focus
Dr. Ben Shen's lab at the University of Florida focuses on discovering and developing new natural products and cancer therapies. They study actinobacteria, microorganisms known for producing diverse chemical compounds, to identify and produce novel drugs that can potentially treat various diseases, including cancer. The lab also works on improving antibody-drug conjugates, which are treatments that deliver toxins directly to cancer cells, thereby increasing their effectiveness and reducing side effects.
natural productscancer therapeuticsantibody-drug conjugatesmicrobial geneticsbiotechnologygenome miningactinobacteriadrug developmentbiosynthesisprecision medicine
Research Aims
5AIM 01Identify new natural products through genome mining of actinobacteria
AIM 02Characterize the biosynthetic pathways of novel natural products
AIM 03Develop site-specific antibody-drug conjugates for targeted cancer therapy
AIM 04Evaluate the effectiveness of new ADCs in preclinical models
AIM 05Explore the structural diversity of natural products for drug discovery.
Skills the Lab Values
genome sequencinggenomic analysisgenetic engineeringantibody-drug conjugationcell culturein vitro assaysmouse modelschemical synthesisnatural product isolationdata analysis using bioinformatics
Output against the department
Publications419top 15% of dept.68th of 462
this lab
most publishedleast published
Citations22ktop 15% of dept.71st of 462
this lab
most citedleast cited
Career totals from OpenAlex, compared against labs that share a department. A department spans everything from one paper to tens of thousands, so bar heights are on a log scale — otherwise the largest lab would flatten every other bar to a line.