Biography

Dr. Li is an endowed College of Science Faculty Fellow professor of Inflammation Biology and Immunology and director of the GBCB (Genetics, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology) program at Virginia Tech. His laboratory pioneered the concept of innate immune memory dynamics ranging from low-grade inflammation to innate immune exhaustion dependent upon signal strength and duration.  He served as a President of the Inflammation Research Association, was a standing member of two NIH study sections, and organized and chaired cutting-edge scientific meeting sessions on the emerging topic of innate immune memory dynamics nationally and internationally. He is an elected Fellow of the American Heart Association (AHA) and the elected lifetime distinguished fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). 

Abstract

Emerging studies suggest a novel role of innate immune memory during the pathogenesis and treatment of diverse inflammatory diseases. However, the fundamental principles that underlie the generation of innate immune memory are not well understood, thus hindering the effective development of innate-based therapeutics.  We have defined the signal-strength and history dependent memory adaptation of innate immune cells including monocytes and neutrophils in both murine and human systems.  Integrative single cell RNAseq and protein-based analyses reveal the existence of unique subsets of memory monocytes/neutrophils with divergent inflammatory and/or resolving natures.  Genetic studies reveal that TRAM-mediated signaling circuitry is required for the establishment of inflammatory and/or exhausted innate memory leukocytes, and that the deletion of TRAM can effectively reprogram innate immune cells into a novel resolving phenotype. Our pharmacological approach independently reveals that the generation of resolving innate immune cells conducive for the treatment of both acute sepsis as well as chronic inflammatory atherosclerosis.  Taken together, our engineered precision-based immune cell therapeutics have therapeutic potentials in restraining inflammation and treating chronic inflammatory diseases. I will discuss the recent advances in the field of innate immune cell based therapeutics.