| Biography | |
|---|---|
 Prof. Peng Jiang National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, USA |
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| Title: Systematic Investigation of Cytokine Signaling Activity at the Tissue and Single-Cell Level | |
| Abstract: Cytokines are critical for intercellular communication in human health and disease, but the investigation of cytokine signaling activity has remained challenging due to the short half-lives of cytokines and the complexity/redundancy of cytokine functions. To address these challenges, we developed the Cytokine Signaling Analyzer (CytoSig, https://cytosig.ccr.cancer.gov), providing both a database of target genes modulated by cytokines and a predictive model of cytokine signaling cascades from transcriptomic profiles. We collected 20,591 transcriptome profiles for human cytokine, chemokine, and growth factor responses. This atlas of transcriptional patterns induced by cytokines enabled the reliable prediction of signaling activities in distinct cell populations in infectious diseases, chronic inflammation, and cancer using bulk and single-cell data. CytoSig revealed previously unidentified roles of many cytokines, such as BMP6 as an anti-inflammatory factor, and identified candidate therapeutic targets in human inflammatory diseases, such as CXCL8 for severe COVID-19. | |
| Biography: Dr. Peng Jiang started his research program at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in July 2019. Before joining NCI, he finished his postdoctoral training at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard University (mentor: Xiaole Liu). During his postdoctoral research, Peng developed computational frameworks that repurposed public domain data to identify biomarkers and regulators of cancer immunotherapy resistance. Notably, his computational model TIDE revealed that cancer cells could utilize the self-protection strategy of cytotoxic lymphocytes to resist lymphocyte killing under immune checkpoint blockade. Dr. Peng finished his Ph.D. at the Department of Computer Science & Lewis Sigler Genomics Institute at Princeton University (advisor: Mona Singh, co-advisor: Hilary Coller), and his undergraduate study with the highest honors at the Department of Computer Science at Tsinghua University (GPA rank 1st in his year). He is a recipient of the NCI K99 Pathway to Independence Award and the Scholar-In-Training Award of the American Association of Cancer Research. | |
