Yuzhong Liu, PhD

Scripps Research

Dr. Yuzhong Liu Awarded Michelson Prize for Proposal to Strengthen Vaccines Using Natural Compounds

The Michelson Medical Research Foundation and the Human Immunome Project have awarded one of the 2024 Michelson Prizes: Next Generation Grants to Dr. Yuzhong Liu in recognition of her proposal, “Improved Saponin-based Adjuvants for Cancer Vaccines,” to biosynthesize vaccine antigens inspired by natural products.

About

Dr. Yuzhong Liu is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at Scripps Research. She leads a lab that combines natural product chemistry and synthetic biology to advance novel drug discovery. Her award-winning Michelson Prize proposal “Improved Saponin-based Adjuvants for Cancer Vaccines,” seeks to use synthetic biology to elucidate the structure-immunoactivity relationship of natural and new-to-nature glycosides to guide the design of more potent and safer vaccine adjuvant candidates for cancer vaccines.