Yaxun Huang, United States

Dr. Yaxun Huang is currently a surgeon with special focus on liver transplantation at the Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Hunan, China. Dr. Huang is very interested in organ transplantation immune tolerance. She joined Dr. Defu Zeng’s lab at The Beckman Research Institute, City of Hope National Medical Center as a visiting scholar from 2019 to 2022 to study induction of mixed chimerism for organ transplantation immune tolerance. She established murine models of mixed chimerism (MC) and skin and heart transplantation as well as dissected the role of donor PD-L1 and MHCII in induction of MHC-mismatched MC and organ transplantation immune tolerance. Dr. Huang finished her research training in the Zeng Lab in July 2022 and returned to her home hospital to work as a liver transplantation surgeon. A manuscript about Dr. Huang’s work in the Zeng Lab on role of donor PD-L1 and MHCII in induction of mixed chimerism and organ transplantation immune tolerance is under revision process for American Journal of Transplantation. Dr. Huang is going to work on translating induction of mixed chimerism as a novel approach for induction of immune tolerance for liver transplant in clinic.