Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering

Speaker: Bingfei Yu, Ph.D., Assistant Professor Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology - USC-KSOM

Talk Title: "Decoding and rewiring immune recognition at single-cell resolution"

Abstract: Cells sense and respond to the external world with cell surface receptors. Each receptor is like a lock that can only be opened with the right key ligand. One of the greatest challenges is finding the special key that unlocks each receptor, e.g. on individual immune cells that each possess a distinct T cell receptor which recognizes a unique antigen. I developed a viral platform termed ENTER to approach this problem at scale, and read out ligand specificity, receptor identity, and cell fate consequences in single cells. I further engineered ENTER to achieve targeted delivery of therapeutic payload to antigen-specific immune cells, from "reading" receptors to "writing" cell compositions based on receptor identity. This work uncovers immune recognition and communication principles, and offers translational avenues in autoimmunity and cancer immunotherapy.

Biography: Dr. Bingfei Yu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Microbiology & Immunology and a primary member of Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. She earned her Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of California, San Diego, where she worked with Prof. Ananda Goldrath on differentiation pathways of T cells combating infectious diseases and cancer. During her postdoc research in the lab of Prof. Howard Chang at Stanford, Bingfei explored epigenetics, viral engineering, and single cell genomics to develop technologies that decode immune recognition and molecular blueprints. She is a recipient of Parker Bridge Fellow, Baxter Foundation Faculty Fellow, and the V scholar award.

Host: Keyue Shen, Ph.D.

Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 100 B

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Carla Stanard