SUMMARY
Yuguang Liu, Ph.D., focuses her research on two major initiatives. The first initiative is to overcome technical barriers to investigating long-standing unanswered questions in disease mechanisms. Dr. Liu is developing microfluidic technologies to observe cellular interactions at the single cell level. The aim is to understand how abnormalities occur at microscale, escape immune surveillance and eventually lead to diseases such as chronic infections and cancer.
Dr. Liu's second initiative is to develop novel, automated microfluidic technologies to monitor patients' immune status and closely track how well they are responding to therapies. Treatments such as immunotherapy for cancer can be monitored at the bedside and at home in a regular, noninvasive way. This will inform individualized intervention strategies in a timely manner.
Focus areas
- Develop and use a droplet microfluidic platform and single-cell sequencing to investigate the behaviors of single microbial cells. For example, investigating opportunistic commensal bacteria and immune cells during their initial encounter will reveal how a single bacterial cell can avoid immune surveillance, exploit resources in its microenvironment and disturb the immune equilibrium. This sequence of events may eventually cause abnormalities that can lead to serious illnesses such as malignancies.
- Develop and use a droplet microfluidic platform and single-cell sequencing to understand how cellular interactions can lead to a complete set of hallmarks of malignancy. For example, cellular interactions such as synergism and mutualism among a small number of partially transformed tumor cells and subclones can lead to a complete set of hallmarks of malignancy. The aim is to elucidate mechanisms that impair cellular interaction and inform the design of novel, resistance-proof cancer control strategies.
- Develop a microfluidic platform that can obtain time-longitudinal data to reconstruct the trajectory of immune dynamics under immune-mediated treatment. This programmable, automated digital microfluidic platform can be used to monitor the efficacy of immune-mediated interventions such as cancer immunotherapies. The ultimate goal is to inform the design and deployment of new therapeutics and facilitate effective, individualized treatment of cancer and other diseases.
Significance to patient care
Dr. Liu's work will lead to better understanding of disease mechanisms on a cellular and molecular level, revealing new and fundamental insights into the causative effects of diseases such as cancer and infectious disease. This knowledge can be applied to improve patient outcomes.
In the long term, Dr. Liu is driven to bring point-of-care and point-of-need microfluidic technologies to bedsides, intensive care units, physicians' offices and community medical centers. These technologies will enable tracking of therapeutic responsiveness in patients undergoing immune-mediated treatment such as immunotherapy.
Professional highlights
- Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA) R35, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of General Medical Sciences, 2022.
- Invited proposal review panelist, National Institutes of Health, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and U.S. Department of Defense, 2019-present.