Overview

Dongfang Liu, Ph.D., is a tenured Professor at the Department of Pathology, Immunology, and Laboratory Medicine at Rutgers University - New Jersey Medical School (NJMS). He serves as the Scientific Director of the Cellular Imaging & Histology Core at Rutgers-NJMS. In 2012, Dr. Liu was recruited to Baylor College of Medicine as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics, and Pathology & Immunology. In 2015, he joined the Houston Methodist Research Institute (HMRI, affiliated with Weill Cornell Medical College (WCMC)/Cornell University) as an Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2018 in HMRI. Dr. Liu earned his Ph.D. from 2001 to 2005. He joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for his postdoctoral training from 2005 to 2011, specializing in the immunobiology of natural killer (NK) cells. After completing his postdoctoral training at NIH, he joined the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard in 2011 as a Senior Research Scientist, focusing on HIV-specific immune cell dysfunction. Dr. Liu's current research focuses on the immunobiology of NK cells, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-NK cells, and immune synapse biology and application. With over 20 years of experience in NK cell research and > 10 patent applications, Dr. Liu has published extensively in top-tier journals, including Nature Immunology, Immunity, Nature Communications, JACI, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). He serves on several editorial boards and acts as a reviewer for numerous journals and grant agencies, including the NIH. Dr. Liu holds multiple federal research grants to study the basic mechanisms of NK cell biology and CAR-NK.

Education

PHD, 2005, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Hubei, China
MBBS, 2001, Wuhan University School of Medicine, Hubei, China

Curriculum Vitae

View CV

Languages

Chinese

Relevant Publications

Sabha Y, Kim SH, Tseng HC, Byrne ME, Tsao WC, Lee SH, Zhou Z, Jang MH, Liu D. CD147-CAR-NK cell therapy shows minimal toxicities in human CD147 transgenic mouse model with solid tumors. Mol Ther Oncol. 2025 Mar 20;33(1):200957. doi: 10.1016/j.omton.2025.200957. eCollection 2025 Mar 20. PubMed PMID: 40160933; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC11952776.

Wang X, Byrne ME, Liu C, Ma MT, Liu D. Scalable process development of NK and CAR-NK expansion in a closed bioreactor. Front Immunol. 2024;15:1412378. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2024.1412378. eCollection 2024. PubMed PMID: 39114666; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC11303211.

Ma MT, Jiang Q, Chen C-H, Badeti S, Wang X, Zeng C, Evans D, Bodnar B, Marras SAE, Tyagi S, Bharaj P, Yehia G, Romanienko P, Hu W, Liu S-L, Shi L, Liu D. S309-CAR-NK cells bind the Omicron variants in vitro and reduce SARS-CoV-2 viral loads in humanized ACE2-NSG mice. J Virol. 2024 Jun 13;98(6):e0003824. doi: 10.1128/jvi.00038-24. Epub 2024 May 20. PubMed PMID: 38767356; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC11237809.

Naghizadeh A, Tsao WC, Hyun Cho J, Xu H, Mohamed M, Li D, Xiong W, Metaxas D, Ramos CA, Liu D. In vitro machine learning-based CAR T immunological synapse quality measurements correlate with patient clinical outcomes. PLoS Comput Biol. 2022 Mar;18(3):e1009883. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009883. eCollection 2022 Mar. PubMed PMID: 35303007; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC8955962.

Tseng HC, Xiong W, Badeti S, Yang Y, Ma M, Liu T, Ramos CA, Dotti G, Fritzky L, Jiang JG, Yi Q, Guarrera J, Zong WX, Liu C, Liu D. Efficacy of anti-CD147 chimeric antigen receptors targeting hepatocellular carcinoma. Nat Commun. 2020 Sep 23;11(1):4810. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-18444-2. PubMed PMID: 32968061; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC7511348.

PD-1 Blocks Lytic Granule Polarization in Natural Killer Cell Immunological Synapse via Impairing Integrin 'Outside-in' Signaling. Yu Huang, Joon Hee Jang, Mirza S. Baig, Grant Bertolet, Xi Kang, Shengjian Huang, Qian Hu, Yong Zhao, Lidong Qin, Michael Xi Zhu, Dongfang Liu. J Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 2018 (PMID: 29679656)

Crk adaptor proteins regulate NK cell expansion and differentiation during mouse cytomegalovirus infection. Tsukasa Nabekura, Zhiying Chen, Taeju Park, Tom Curran, Eric Vivier, Lewis Lanier, Dongfang Liu. Journal of Immunology, 2018 (PMID: 29618525).

Immunological Synapse Predicts Effectiveness of Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T Cells. Wei Xiong, Yuhui Chen, Xi Kang, Joon Hee Jang, Hao Liu, Lidong Qin, Gianpietro Dotti, Dongfang Liu. Molecular Therapy, 2018 (PMID: 29503199).

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-modified natural killer cell-based immunotherapy and immunological synapse formation in cancer and HIV. Dongfang Liu, Shuo Tian, Kai Zhang, Wei Xiong, Ndongala Michel Lubaki, Zhiying Chen, Weidong Han. Protein Cell, 2017 Dec;8(12):861-877. doi: 10.1007/s13238-017-0415-5. Epub 2017 May 9. (PMID: 28488245)

Inhibition of B7-H3 checkpoint controls multiple tumors by enhancing NK cell function.Young-Hee Lee, Natalia Martin-Orozco, Peilin Zheng, Wei Xiong, Hyun Jung Park, Mira Jeong, Seon Hee Chang, Byung-Seok Kim, Zhong-jun Dong, Willem W. Overwijk, Patrick Hwu, Qing Yi, Larry Kwak, Tak W. Mak, Laszlo G. Radvanyi, Dongfang Liu and Chen Dong. Cell Research 2017; 17:1034-1045. (PMID: 28685773)

Areas Of Interest

Immunotherapy

NK

NK cell biology

immunological synapse

The role of Crk in immune response

Project #1: The role of Crk in immune response
Project #2: Chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) immunological synapse
Project #3: CAR-NK mediated Immunotherapy


Cytolytic lymphocytes, including natural killer (NK) cells and cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL), play an
important role in the human immune response to infection and malignancy. How these cells mount an
effective immune response to infection and malignancy represents one of the key unsolved problems in
immunology today. The main work in our group seeks to identify the mechanism(s) by which a small adaptor
protein, CT10 regulator of kinase (Crk), and its receptor-driven phosphorylation control NK cells activation
and inhibition (Fig. 2). An essential control of NK cytotoxicity is provided by inhibitory receptors expressing
on NK cells. A recent study demonstrated that HLA-E (a ligand for inhibitory receptor, CD94-NKG2A) alone
induces Crk (chicken tumor virus no.10 regulator of kinase) phosphorylation in NK cells (Liu et al., Immunity,
2012 & Huang et al., J Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 2018 ). The exact functions of Crk in regulation of
immune response have not been explored. We are interested in the role of Crk in immune response by
leveraging a common immunodeficiency, such as partial DiGeorge syndrome (Zhang et al., J Allergy and
Clinical Immunology, 2015), as well as a novel NK-specific murine knockout system (Nabekura et al.,
Journal of Immunology, 2018).