Di Yu

Professor Yu is the pioneer who characterised a major CD4+ helper T cell subset – follicular helper (TFH) cells, which supports and regulates B cells for antibody production, and follicular cytotoxic T (TFC) cells (also known as stem cell-like precursor exhausted T (TPEX) cells), the major CD8+ T cell subset that controls follicular infection and responds to PD-1/PD-L1 blockade immunotherapy. By revealing their novel functions and regulation, his findings have profoundly impacted vaccination design and the diagnosis and treatment of autoimmune diseases, infection and cancer.

Professor Yu has discovered critical molecular mechanisms in controlling the differentiation and function of TFH cells, which include the master transcription factor Bcl6 (Immunity) and Roquin-mediated posttranscriptional regulation (Nature). He led the research to develop a method to monitor the activity of TFH cells in humans (Immunity) and understand IL-21 as the essential TFH effector cytokine (Immunity； Journal of Experimental Medicine; Science Immunology). More recently, he identified the metabolic hormone leptin as the physiological regulator of TFH cells that influences vaccine response in healthy populations (Nature communications). Furthermore, he discovered the specific cell death pathway – ferroptosis in the regulation of TFH cell survival and demonstrated that the mitigation of TFH cell death could boost vaccine response (Nature Immunology). He also discovered TFC cells as a new subset of CD8+ T cells that controls HIV infection in TFH cells and EBV infection in B cells (Nature Immunology). TFC cells also represent the essential population in CD8+ T cells that respond to immune checkpoint therapy blocking PD-1/PD-L1.

Professor Yu has established a broad collaboration network with clinicians. He co-led the first open-label (Nature Medicine) and subsequently randomised controlled clinical trial (Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases) for low-dose IL-2 therapy in lupus, showing its mechanisms of action of regulating TFH, TH17, and TREG cells. In addition, he co-led the clinical study showing that allergen immunotherapy improves defective follicular regulatory T cells in patients with allergic rhinitis (Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology). He recently co-led a team to develop VEGF antibodies linked to exosomes derived from TREG cells to choroidal neovascularization (Nature Biomedical Engineering).