Fudong Liu
Associate Professor
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
McGovern Medical School
Department of Neurology
Research interests in Dr. Liu’s lab focus on innate immune responses and sex differences in cerebral ischemia. Post-stroke inflammation is characterized as either pro- or anti-inflammatory response to neuronal damage, and significantly contributes to stroke pathology as well as functional recovery. We explore regulatory pathways underlying the neuroinflammation aiming to suppress pro-inflammatory and/or promote anti-inflammatory activation of immune cells. Stroke is a sexually dimorphic disease throughout the lifespan. We are interested in how the sex-specific stroke phenotypes are mediated in neonatal, young and aged brains. While hormonal effects play important roles in the sex difference in young stroke patients, we have found chromosomal effects on the stroke sensitivity in aged brains. By using genetically modified animal models, we study escapee genes that escape from X chromosome inactivation (XCI), and try to understand whether and how these genes impacts on the sexual dimorphism.
Cutting-edge technologies are routinely used in Dr. Liu’s lab, including gene conditional knockout, bone marrow chimera, lentivirus transfection, cell membrane/intracellular flow cytometry and sorting, ChIP, FISH, etc. Ischemia models used include but are not limited to , middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) and hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) animal models in vivo, and oxygen-glucose deprivation (OGD) in vitro for neuronal/microglial culture.
McGovern Medical School Faculty
Education & Training
M.D. - Bengbu Medical College China - 1992