Xiaoqin Wu
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, TX·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Heavy drinking can lead to alcohol-associated liver disease (ALD), a common and often deadly condition with few effective treatments. The immune system plays two roles in ALD.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Physiology
- Topics
alcohol-associated liver disease
alcoholic liver disease
necroptosis
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Aug 2026
What they work on
- Characterize liver immune cell populations and cell death after Gao-binge alcohol feeding in Mlkl bone-marrow chimeric mice, using flow cytometry of isolated non-parenchymal liver cells.
- Determine which cell types need MLKL for protection by giving alcohol to mice lacking MLKL in myeloid cells (LysM-Cre), liver macrophages (Clec4f-Cre) or neutrophils (MRP8-Cre).
- Test whether alcohol activates MLKL through the kinase RIP3 or a RIP3-independent route, using phospho-proteomics paired with targeted mechanistic experiments.
- Test whether neutrophil MLKL limits alcohol-induced liver injury by regulating neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs), web-like DNA structures released by neutrophils.
More about the research
Immune cells drive liver damage, but they are also needed to heal it. Whether immune cells survive or die after alcohol exposure may therefore decide whether liver injury worsens or resolves. This project asks how one cell-death protein shapes that balance.
Why it matters
Patients with alcohol-associated liver disease have few effective treatment options. By clarifying how the cell-death protein MLKL controls the survival and death of liver immune cells after alcohol exposure, this work could reveal new targets for treatments that limit liver inflammation and help injured livers recover.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Bernd Schnabl
University of California-San Diego, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether the sugar-adding enzyme Fucosyltransferase 2 (Fut2) on intestinal lining cells limits colonization and translocation of the gut bacterium Enterococcus faecalis and thereby reduces liver disease, using mouse models of ethanol feeding.
Shannon Bailey
University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL·Physiology
Establish whether chronic alcohol consumption disrupts 24-hour rhythms in liver mitochondrial energy production, including the activity of cytochrome c oxidase, the rate-limiting enzyme of respiration, in alcohol-fed mice.
Jocelyn Grunwell
Emory University, GA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether markers of neutrophil cell death, including neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs), in blood and airway samples taken twice in the first week of intubation predict longer intubation or death in children with PARDS.
The school
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston: 25 labs on PI Pages, $419M a year on research, 340 research doctorates a year.
More about University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
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