Pengda Liu receives a Medical Research Grant from Gabrielle’s Angels Foundation to study “Targeting innate immunity independent STING function in treating AML”
Pengda Liu received a Medical Research Grant from Gabrielle’s Angels Foundation for Cancer Research. The purpose of Gabrielle’s Angels which “is to encourage the development of more effective therapies for patients with leukemia, lymphoma and related cancers.” Since 1996, Gabrielle’s Angel Foundation has awarded $25 million to over 130 of the nation’s best and brightest junior investigators. Eighty-nine cents of every dollar we raise funds research.
Pengda’s research involves “a key enzyme with canonical function in sensing invasive DNA and RNA that is hijacked by AML to facilitate tumor growth and survival. We are trying to understand how it is hijacked in AML and how to develop targeted therapies aiming at this enzyme”
Dr. Liu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics and a member of UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Wenyi Wei in BIDMC, Harvard Medical School in Boston. Since joining the faculty at UNC, he has been awarded a UNC IBM Junior Faculty Development Award (2016), an Atomwise AIMS award (2017), a Martin D. Abeloff, a V Scholar Award from the V Foundation for Cancer Research (2018), a NCBC Flash Grant (2019), a NCTraCS Pilot Grant (2019), UNC Lineberger Development Award (2019), an Avanta Sciences Foundation Grant (2019) and a Breast Cancer Alliance Young Investigator Grant (2020). He is also currently completing an NCI Moonshot R21 grant (2019–present).
Research in his lab emphasizes on cancer cell signaling. His group focuses on mechanistic understandings of how dysregulation of kinase and innate immune signaling contributes to tumorigenesis with the aims to identify new biomarkers or drug targets to combat these human disorders.
Gabrielle’s Angels Foundation for Cancer Research
Gabrielle’s Angels Foundation for Cancer Research Grant Information and Award