Yong-Chen “William” Lu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of in the Department of Pathology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). He received his Ph.D. training at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University of Toronto, Canada. After finishing his Ph.D. training, he became a postdoctoral visiting fellow at Surgery Branch, National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health (NIH). He was promoted to a staff scientist position, prior to joining the UAMS in early 2021.
Dr. Lu’s research focuses on the development of effective T cell-based immunotherapies for patients with metastatic cancers. He has played a pivotal role in the successful cancer treatments using the T-cell therapies targeting shared cancer antigens or patient-specific mutated antigens. In recent years, he utilizes single-cell sequencing technologies to facilitate the development of new T-cell therapies against cancer.
Selected Publications
Kirkpatrick C, Quick CM, Post SR, Leung YK, Dings RPM, Paulos CM, Burdine L, Lu Y*. Detection of mitochondrial DNA mutations in T cells following 5-FU or cisplatin exposure. Cell Reports Medicine. (2026) 7(3):102663.
Kirkpatrick C, Hao S, Quick CM, Post SR, Leung YK, Burdine L, Lu Y*. Isolation of mitochondrial mutation-specific T cell receptors. Journal of Immunology, a journal of the American Association of Immunologists. (2025) 214(10):2770-2780.
Kirkpatrick C, Lu Y*. Deciphering CD4(+) T cell-mediated responses against cancer. Molecular Carcinogenesis. (2024) 63(7):1209-1220.
Lu Y*, Zheng Z, Lowery FJ, Gartner JJ, Prickett TD, Robbins PF, Rosenberg SA. Direct identification of neoantigen-specific TCRs from tumor specimens by high-throughput single-cell sequencing. Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer, a journal of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer. (2021) 9:e00259.
Lu Y*, Jia L, Zheng Z, Tran E, Robbins PF, Rosenberg SA*. Single-cell transcriptome analysis reveals gene signatures associated with T-cell persistence following adoptive cell therapy. Cancer Immunology Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. (2019) 7(11):1824-1836.
Leko V, McDuffie LA, Zheng Z, Gartner JJ, Prickett TD, Apolo AB, Agarwal PK, Rosenberg SA, Lu Y*. Identification of neoantigen-reactive tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in primary bladder cancer. Journal of Immunology, a journal of the American Association of Immunologists. (2019) 202(12):3458-3467.
Lu Y*, Zheng Z, Robbins PF, Tran E, Prickett TD, Gartner JJ, Li YF, Ray S, Franco Z, Bliskovsky V, Fitzgerald PC, Rosenberg SA*. An efficient single-cell RNA-seq approach to identify neoantigen-specific T Cell receptors. Molecular Therapy, a journal of the American Society of Gene Therapy. (2018) 26(2):379-389.
Lu Y, Parker LL, Lu T, Zheng Z, Toomey MA, White DE, Yao X, Li YF, Robbins PF, Feldman SA, van der Bruggen P, Klebanoff CA, Goff SL, Sherry RM, Kammula US, Yang JC, Rosenberg SA. Treatment of patients with metastatic cancer using a major histocompatibility complex class II-restricted T-cell receptor targeting the cancer germline antigen MAGE-A3. Journal of Clinical Oncology, a journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. (2017) 35(29):3322-3329.
*Corresponding author(s)
The complete list of published work is available on My Bibliography and ORCID.