Dr. Cheng Yang started his pre-doctoral training with Dr. Matthias von Herrath in La Jolla Institute and Dr. Mala Maini in University College London, where he gained extensive experience in the modulation of antigen-specific T cells in the context of type 1 diabetes, chronic LCMV and hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection.

During his doctoral and the first post-doctoral training at Singapore Immunology Network of A*STAR with Dr. Evan Newell, his research was focused on deep-profiling human virus-specific T cells in chronic HBV infection and HBV-associated liver disease and cancer using highly multiplexed combinatorial peptide-MHC tetramer staining, mass cytometry, single-cell multi-omics, and high-dimensional analysis.

Dr. Cheng discovered several novel T cell epitopes targeting HBV and HBV-reactive TCRs that can be used for immunotherapeutics. He and his research group found that HBV-specific memory T cell, or tumor-infiltrating tissue-resident memory HBV-specific T cell responses were linked to the patients’ improved clinical outcomes.

Dr. Cheng continued his human immunology research in Massachusetts General Hospital at Harvard Medical School as a Senior Research Scientist, exploring the tissue-resident memory human papillomavirus (HPV)-specific T cell responses in patients with HPV-associated diseases.

Dr. Cheng Yang joined the Institute of Biomedical Sciences as an Assistant Research Fellow in January, 2023.