Welcome to Dongfang Liu Group

Front row, from the left: Ali (postdoc), Bryan (postdoc), Edward (postdoc), Carlos (Research Associate)

Back row, from the left: Xuening (Senior Research Associate), Dongfang (PI), Minh (PhD student), Aditya (MD/PhD student), Becky (rotating PhD student), Youssef (PhD student), James (Masters student), Ziren (rotating PhD student)

 

The Liu lab is interested in investigating the role of Natural Killer cells in health and disease. Currently the lab is focused on developing novel NK-cell based therapies for treating cancer and infection (including COVID-19).

Our lab has expertise in molecular, genomic, bioinformatics, biochemical, immunological, and advanced super-resolution imaging technologies including the following:

  • Primary NK and CAR-NK cell expansion ex vivo
  • PDX model generation from human patient cancer samples
  • Evaluating immune-mediated killing of target cells (Chromium51 release assay platform)
  • Molecular cloning and CRISPR (Insertion and deletion of target genes for stable expression or deletion)
  • Flow cytometry
  • Western blots
  • Confocal imaging
  • Live-cell imaging (super-resolution STED and TIRF high-resolution microscopy)
  • In vivo experiments
  • Transgenic mouse models to evaluate NK function