Overview

Dongfang Liu, PhD recently joined the Department of Pathology, Immunology &
Laboratory Medicine
and the Center for Immunity and Inflammation as an Associate Professor. In
2012, Dr. Liu was
recruited to Baylor College of Medicine as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in
the Department of
Pediatrics and Department of Pathology & Immunology, before joining Houston
Methodist Hospital (a
teaching hospital affiliated with Weill Cornell Medical College) as an assistant
professor in 2015. In
2018, Dr. Liu was promoted to an Associate Professor in Houston Methodist
Research Institute. Dr. Liu
did his postdoctoral training on natural killer (NK) cells at the National
Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 2005 to
2011. After completing
the postdoctoral training, he joined Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard in
2011 as a senior
research scientist, where he worked on HIV-specific CTL dysfunction with a focus
on PD-1 in HIV-
specific CTLs. His current research is primarily focused on the immunobiology of
chimeric
antigen receptor (CAR) T and NK cells, immunoreceptors, CAR immunotherapy, and
HIV-specific CTLs
in chronic HIV and its related malignancies, with a focus on immunological
synapse biology and its
clinical applications. His research is supported by several NIH grants,
including an R01 and three
R21 grants.

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

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)

Molecular Mechanisms of Functional Natural Killer Deficiency in Patients with Partial DiGeorge Syndrome. Peilin Zheng, Lenora M. Noroski, Imelda C. Hanson, Yuhui Chen, Michelle Eugene Lee, Yu Huang, Pinaki Banerjee, George Makedonas, Jordan S. Orange, William T. Shearer, Dongfang Liu?. J Allergy and Clinical Immunology. 2015 May; 135(5):1293-302. doi: 10.1016/j.jaci.2015.01.011. Epub 2015 Mar 3. (PMID: 25748067).

Imaging of Cell-Cell Communication in a Vertical Orientation Reveals High-Resolution Structure of Immunological Synapse and Novel PD-1 Dynamics. Joon Hee Jang, Yu Huang, Peilin Zheng, Myeong Chan Jo, Grant Bertolet, Lidong Qin, Dongfang Liu?. Journal of Immunology. 2015 Aug 1; 195(3):1320-30. doi: 10.4049/jimmunol.1403143. Epub 2015 Jun 29. (PMID: 26123352).

The Planar Lipid Bilayer System Serves as a Reductionist Approach for Studying NK Cell Immunological Synapses and Their Functions. Grant Bertolet, Dongfang Liu. Methods Mol Biol 2016; 1441:151-65 (PMCID: PMC5614496).

Super-resolution imaging of the natural killer cell immunological synapses on a glass-supported planar lipid bilayer. Peilin Zheng, Grant Bertolet, Yuhui Chen, Shengjian Huang, Dongfang Liu?. Journal of Visualized Experiments. (96):52502, 1-7. Published online 2015 Feb 11. doi: 10.3791/52502. (PMCID: PMC4354632).

COPA mutations impair ER-Golgi transport and cause hereditary autoimmune-mediated lung disease and arthritis. Watkin LB, Jessen B, Wiszniewski W, Vece TJ, Jan M, Sha Y, Thamsen M, Santos- Cortez RL, Lee K, Gambin T, Forbes LR, Law CS, Stray-Pedersen A, Cheng MH, Mace EM, Anderson MS, Liu, Dongfang, Tang LF, Nicholas SK, Nahmod K, Makedonas G, Canter DL, Kwok PY, Hicks J, Jones KD, Penney S, Jhangiani SN, Rosenblum MD, Dell SD, Waterfield MR, Papa FR, Muzny DM, Zaitlen N, Leal SM, Gonzaga-Jauregui C; Baylor-Hopkins Center for Mendelian Genomics, Boerwinkle E, Eissa NT, Gibbs RA, Lupski JR, Orange JS, Shum AK. Nat Genet. 2015 Jun; 47(6):654-60. doi: 10.1038/ng.3279. Epub 2015 Apr 20. (PMID: 25894502).

Areas Of Interest

Immunotherapy

NK

immunological synapse

The role of Crk in immune response

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).