Bo Li, PhD
Associate Professor of Pathology and Laboratory MedicinePerelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
Contact InformationChildren's Hospital of Philadelphia
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Colket Translational Research Building, Rm. 9014
3501 Civic Center Blvd
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Tel: 734-546-7574
Email: libo2@pennmedicine.upenn.edu
Research Expertise
My research focuses on decoding the functional impacts of adaptive immune receptors using computational, genomic and experimental approaches. We are a hybrid lab with both wet and dry components. We have three major ongoing directions: First, the adaptive immune system is sensitive to early disease cues, such as cancer, providing a unique opportunity for detection of early-stage cancers. My lab is dedicated to developing novel computational tools to extract useful information from the TCR or BCR repertoires to achieve immune-based early cancer detection. Second, we investigate the complicated interactions between tumor and the immune system through novel methodology development. In a recent work, we observed that cancer cells can 'hijack' mitochondria from nearby T cells, thus causing T cell metabolic dysfunction. We have introduced a novel computational tool to investigate this process in the human cancers, and we are actively investigating potential targets to block this process. Third, autologous antibodies produced by tumor-infiltrating B/plasma cells provide valuable information in the spontaneous anti-tumor immune response. We develop novel deep neural network methods to infer the antibody-antigen interactions by using the BCR sequences identified in the tumor microenvironment, aiming to find novel tumor antigen targets as well as high-affinity antibodies for effective cancer immunotherapies.
Education
BS (Physics), Peking University, 2009
PhD (Bioinformatics), University of Michigan, 2014
Specialty Certification
Postgraduate Training
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, 2014-17
Awards and Honors
Peking University Benz Scholar, Peking University, 2005-09
Peking University Chun-Tsung Research Scholar Fellowship, Peking University, 2007
Rackham International Research Award, University of Michigan, 2010
Rackham Pre-doctoral Fellowship, University of Michigan, 2013
Harvard Chinese Life Science YongJin Annual Distinguished Research Award, Harvard School of Public Health, 2017
Memberships and Professional Organizations
American Society of Human Genetics, 2010-14
American Association of Cancer Research, 2014-present
American Association of Immunology, 2018-present
Eastern Northern American Region, 2020-present
Serum, Inc., Academic Co-Founder and Scientific Advisory Board Member, 2021-present
Department of Defense OCRP Study Section, 2022-present
International Society for Computational Biology, 2022-present
NCI ITCR U01 Special Emphasis Panel Study Section, 2024-present
JCI P01 ZCA1 Study Section, 2024-present
NCI PLCO U01 Special Emphasis Panel Study Section, 2025-present
Web Links
Selected Publications
Quantifiable blood TCR repertoire components associated with immune aging
Hu J, Pan M, Reid B, Tworoger S, Li B. Nat Commun 15(1):8171, Sep 2024. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-52522-z. PMID: 39289351; PMCID: PMC11408526.
Quantifiable TCR repertoire changes in pre-diagnostic blood specimens among high-grade ovarian cancer patients
Yu X, Ye J, Hathaway CA, Tworoger S, Lea J, Li B. bioRxiv [Preprint]. 2023 Oct 17:2023.10.12.562056. doi: 10.1101/2023.10.12.562056. Update in: Cell Rep Med 5(7):101612, Jul 2024. doi: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2024.101612. PMID: 37905034; PMCID: PMC10614767.
Systematic investigation of mitochondrial transfer between cancer cells and T cells at single-cell resolution
Zhang H, Yu X, Ye J, Li H, Hu J, Tan Y, Fang Y, Akbay E, Yu F, Weng C, Sankaran VG, Bachoo RM, Maher E, Minna J, Zhang A, Li B. Cancer Cell 41(10):1788-1802.e10, Oct 2023. doi: 10.1016/j.ccell.2023.09.003. PMID: 37816332; PMCID: PMC10568073.
Concurrent delivery of immune checkpoint blockade improves tumor microenvironment for vaccine-generated immunity
Liu L, Chen J, Zhang H, Ye J, Moore C, Lu C, Fang Y, Fu YX, Li B. Nat Cancer 3(4):437-452, Apr 2022. doi: 10.1038/s43018-022-00352-7. Epub 2022 Apr 7. PMID: 35393580; PMCID: PMC9050907.
T cell receptor convergence is an indicator of antigen-specific T cell response in cancer immunotherapies
Pan M, Li B. Elife 11:e81952, Nov 2022. doi: 10.7554/eLife.81952. PMID: 36350695; PMCID: PMC9683788.
GIANA allows computationally-efficient TCR clustering and multi-disease repertoire classification by isometric transformation
Zhang H, Zhan X, Li B. Nat Commun 12(1):4699, Aug 2021. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-25006-7. Erratum in: Nat Commun. 2021 Sep 3;12(1):5334. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-25693-2. PMID: 34349111; PMCID: PMC8339063.
De novo prediction of cancer-associated T-cell receptors for non-invasive cancer detection
Beshnova D, Ye J, Onabolu O, Moon B, Zheng W, Fu YX, Brugarolas J, Lea J, Li B. Sci Transl Med 12(557):eaaz3738, Aug 2020. doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aaz3738. PMID: 32817363; PMCID: PMC7887928.
Investigation of antigen-specific T cell clusters in human cancers
Zhang H, Liu L, Zhang J, Chen J, Ye J, Shukla S, Qiao J, Zhan X, Chen H, Wu CJ, Fu YX, Li B. Clin Cancer Res 26(6):1359-1371, Mar 2020. doi: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-19-3249. Epub 2019 Dec 12. PMID: 31831563.
Landscape of B cell immunity and related immune evasion in human cancers
Hu X, Zhang J, Wang J, Fu J, Li T, Zheng X, Wang B, Gu S, Jiang P, Fan J, Ying X, Zhang J, Carroll MC, Wucherpfennig KW, Hacohen N, Zhang F, Zhang P, Liu JS, Li B, Liu XS. Nat Genet 51(3):560-567, Mar 2019. doi: 10.1038/s41588-018-0339-x. Epub 2019 Feb 11. Erratum in: Nat Genet. 2019 Jun;51(6):1068. doi: 10.1038/s41588-019-0437-4. PMID: 30742113; PMCID: PMC6773274.
Ultrasensitive detection of TCR hypervariable region in solid-tissue RNA-seq data
Li B, Li T, Wang B, Dou R, Zhang J, Liu JS, Liu XS. Nat Genet 49(4):482-483, Mar 2017. doi: 10.1038/ng.3820. PMID: 28358132; PMCID: PMC6959004.
