Gan obtained her undergraduate degree in pharmacy from Manchester University, England and subsequent higher qualifications (M. Pharm and PhD) from Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). Upon completion of her PhD in 2003, she joined the Medical School in USM and headed the Pharmacology Department (Dec 2007-Jan 2009). Subsequently she became the Director of Human Genome Centre (Mac 2009- Jan 2013) before being promoted to a Professor (2014). She joined Monash University Malaysia as a Professor in Pharmacy in Jan 2018 after serving in USM for 18 years.

To date, Gan has received various fundings from national and international agencies including WHO, TWAS-COMSTECH (UNESCO), e-science, FRGS, Research University (RU) (Team), RU (individual), APEX Delivering excellence, Dana Inovasi Awal, Industrial, short term and Research Acculturation Collaborative Effort grants amounting to RM 5.8 million. She has successfully supervised 15 PhD and 3 MSc students some of whom have worked/ are working with John Hopkins and also National University of Singapore (NUS) as post-doctoral fellows indicating the good quality of postgraduates produced.

Together with her collaborators in Universiti Sains Malaysia, Jahangirnagar University (Bangladesh), Griffith University (Australia), Santiago University (Spain), Lahore University (Pakistan) and several more, she has published more than 200 WOS-indexed papers with more than 60% of papers that are internationally-collaborated. Gan is an avid writer and has also written more than 10 books (including 5 children books). She has also published some book chapters (in both Bahasa Malaysia and English) published by Springer, Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, MPH publishers, Kanyin, Zi Publishers, Penerbit USM and Dewan Bahasa & Pustaka and is a Cochrane translator (English-Malay-English).

Gan serves on the editorial board of several journals such as Seminars in Cancer Biology, Frontiers in Pharmacology, PlosOne journal, International Journal of Hypertension, Current Chemical Genomics & Translational Medicine, World Journal of Medical Genetics and Evidence-Based Complementary Alternative Medicine.

Gan is a life member of Malaysian Pharmaceutical Society, Malaysian Natural Products Society and Malaysian Society of Infectious Disease & Chemotherapy. She is also a member of Association Clinical Biochemist, Malaysian Society for Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Malaysian Society of Pharmacology & Physiology, Institute of Food Technologists, Human Genome Organisation, Association of Malaysian Medical Editors (AMMJE), Asia Pacific Association of Medical Journal Editors (APAME) and a member of SIRIM (Malaysia Department of Standard) working group for nanotechnology.

Gan is a trainer for scientific writing and professional development programmes including presentation skills, viva defense & time management. She has been conducting workshops in several institutions in Malaysia (since 2005) as well as in India (in 2017). Her area of specialisations include pharmacogenetics, toxicology and natural products. She is very happy to collaborate, nationally and internationally.

Gan has strong interest in pharmacokinetic analysis using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). To date she has successfully developed detection method for various analgesics (tramadol, fentanyl, morphine), anti-diabetics (repaglinide, metformin), malaria (artesunate, amodiaquine), anicoagulant (warfarin),anti-hypertensive (propanolol), anticancer (arabinoside-C, imatinib, doxorubin) and other substances including paraquat and amphetamine-type stimulants. She has also developed detection methods for various alleles present in Asian populations including for CYP2D6, CYP3A4, CYP2C9, CYP2A6 dan CYP2C8 genes by using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for pharmacogenetic studies. Currently, Gan has also embarked on natural products research and have interests in analysis of honey quality and potential therapeutic activities of various components in honey and honey products including propolis, bee venom and royal jelly.