PhD-student
PhD Weixin Liao
Research:
Tumour microenvironment (TME) has recently been considered as a prognostic factor in cancer treatments. As the key effectors in the tumour killing activity, CD8+ T cells are continuously exposed to the persistent antigen and inflammatory stimulation in TME, thereby proceeding into a dysfunctional state called T cell exhaustion. Although emerging studies have tried to elucidate the early fate decision of CD8+ T cells in cancers, the initiation of the CD8+ T cells exhaustion program remains unclear. As one of the most widely distributed cytokines with multifunctional roles, TGFβ is central to mediating immune tolerance and response. Previous studies have reported the role of TGFβ on T cell exhaustion, however, the modulatory mechanism behind it is still an unsolved question. My research interest is to understand the underlying mechanism of TGFβ-induced immune evasion and try to screen the modulators that are correlated to TGFβ-mediated CD8+ T cell exhaustion.
Curriculum Vitae:
I received my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Clinical Medicine, majoring in Internal Medicine. During my Master’s period at Sun Yat-sen University, I worked on a project related to a prognostic biomarker in hepatocellular carcinoma and I found myself interested in the field of signaling transduction in cancer immunology. Then I joined the group of Dr. Peter ten Dijke in October 2022.
