Mengze Lyu, PhD

Mengze Lyu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, a resident faculty member at the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine, holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and is an Associate Member of the Institute for Infectious and Inflammatory Diseases and the Center for Immunity & Inflammation.

Dr. Lyu received his Ph.D. from Peking University, where he discovered manganese as a potent activator of the cGAS–STING innate immune pathway. This research was translated into a completed Phase I clinical trial with promising results and has led to the clinical development of manganese-based cancer therapies, including immunotherapies (Cell Research, 2020). As a postdoctoral fellow at Weill Cornell Medicine, he identified a family of RORγt⁺ antigen-presenting cells that establish immune tolerance to gut microbiota (Nature, 2022). As an Instructor of Microbiology and Immunology in Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, he revealed that B7 co-stimulatory signaling unexpectedly antagonizes microbiota-specific regulatory T-cell differentiation and intestinal immune tolerance (J. Exp. Med., 2026). His laboratory investigates how host–microbe interactions regulate tissue immunity, cancer progression, and therapeutic responses through microbe-regulated immune and metabolic mechanisms to develop novel therapeutic strategies for cancer and inflammatory disorders.