Rong Cai

Dr. Cai earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from West Virginia University (August 2010 – May 2016). She then conducted postdoctoral research at the University of California, Riverside (July 2016 – January 2019), and has been a Professor at Shandong University since January 2019. She has been a member of the Pharmaceutical Analysis Division of China Medicinal Biotechnology Association (CMBA) since 2019, and has served as a Scientific Editor for the journal Pharmaceutical Science Advances since 2021. She is also the Principal Investigator of research projects funded by the Young Scientists Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and sub-projects of the National Key Research and Development Program of China. Dr.Cai’s research focuses on mass spectrometry-based proteomics. Her work involves synthesizing activity-based probes that target cell signaling pathways or are derived from drug molecules, enabling the enrichment and analysis of target proteins to elucidate disease pathogenesis and drug mechanisms of action. She has developed novel probes for various phosphate-containing metabolites along with corresponding proteomic analytical methods. Compared to existing approaches, these probes exhibit significantly enhanced stability and labeling efficiency, demonstrating strong potential for future applications. This strategy is highly versatile and can be extended to the study of other metabolites, thereby establishing a comprehensive analytical platform. It not only enables systematic analysis of metabolite-interacting proteins but also facilitates the discovery of novel binding partners, deepening the understanding of the biological functions of these metabolites. This methodology has been successfully applied to identify drug target proteins and elucidate drug mechanisms of action, and can also be integrated with disease models to explore new drug targets, offering substantial research value.

Selected publications:
1. Gao, C.; Wang, L.; Tan, J.; Lai, H.; Ni, L.; Tian, Y.; Cai, R.* “Chemoproteomic Profiling of ATP-Binding Sites with Acid-Cleavable Photoreactive Adenosine Phosphate Probes”, Anal. Chem. 2026, 98 (9), 6709-6716.
2. Tan, J.; Gao, C.; Ni, L.; Li, M.; Cai, R.* “Chemoproteomic Profiling of Isoprenoid Pyrophosphate Interacting Proteins with Photoaffinity Probes”, Anal. Chem. 2025, 97 (25), 13266-13273.
3. Gao, C. #; Li, M. #; Tan, J.; Wang, Z.; Xu, J.; Li, W.; Shi, F.; Chen, Z.; Cai, R.* “Acid-Cleavable Guanosine Triphosphate-Photoaffinity Probe for Global Profiling of Guanosine Triphosphate-Binding Proteins and Their Active Sites”, Anal. Chem. 2025, 97 (6), 3293-3301.
4. Wang, Z.#; Tan, J.#; Li, M.; Gao, C.; Li, W.; Xu, J.; Guo, C.; Chen, Z.; Cai, R.* “Clickable Photoreactive ATP-Affinity Probe for Global Profiling of ATP-Binding Proteins”, Anal. Chem. 2023, 95 (48), 17533-17540.
5. Cai, R.*, Wang, Y. (2023). Chemoproteomic Profiling of Geranyl Pyrophosphate-Binding Proteins. In: Luque-Garcia, J.L. (eds) SILAC. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2603. Humana, New York, NY.