Dr. Yang's research has concerned liver stem cells and cancer, gene therapy, apoptosis, molecular targeted therapy, biomarker targeted drug delivery, and cancer nanotechnology. During the last several years, she lead a research team to develop targeted optical and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) nanoparticle probes for early detection of breast and pancreatic cancers and for image-guided surgery. Her group has developed a theranostic magnetic iron oxide nanoparticle (IONP) platform that utilizes receptor-targeted IONPs to carry single or multiple therapeutic agents for drug delivery and multi-modality tumor imaging. Her current research also focuses on molecular targets and signal pathways that confer aggressive behavior, invasiveness and resistance to apoptosis in triple negative breast cancer.