In July 2004, Xiaohua received her Ph.D. degree in Organic Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Ya-Qiu Long at Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (Chinese Academy of Sciences), China. Her doctoral research focused on the synthesis of small molecules acting as HIV-1 integrase inhibitors and synthesis of piperazino-piperidine based CCR5 antagonists which acted as HIV-1 entry inhibitors. In the same year she worked as a postdoc with Prof. R.R. Schmidt at the Department of Chemistry, University of Konstanz, Germany. She was involved in a project related to "New methods for the generation of carbohydrate arrays on glass slides and their evaluation". In May 2006, she worked at the National Institute of Parasitic Disease, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Shanghai, China as an assistant Professor and associate Professor. Xiaohua joined the Institute of Molecular Pharmacy in July 2007 and is currently working on the MAG project.