Park, Yuk Pheel, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor Research

Personal Statement:

Dr. Park obtained her PhD in Biology (Cell and molecular biology) from the Chungnam National University, the republic of Korea. During the PhD, she focused on understanding cancer biology from human gastric & prostate cancer patients and cell lines. She was looking for the cancer specific biomarkers and studied tumor progression by immortalization and altered signaling pathway. Dr. Park had postdoctoral training in Dr. John Coligan’s laboratory at NIH to study immune receptors, NKG2D and DAP10, in human primary NK cells. Then she joined Dr. Edward K.L. Chan laboratory at University of Florida to study Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR)-T cell immunotherapy for treating head and neck cancer patients. In 2020, She joined the laboratory of Dr. Laurence Morel at University of Florida, and they moved the department of Microbiology, Immunology & Molecular Genetics at the University of Texas Health Science center at San Antonio in 2022. Dr. Park focuses to define cellular and molecular mechanisms of lupus pathogenesis on immune cells. The long-term goal is identification and understand mechanisms how lupus susceptibility genes impact on the immune system, and translate new knowledges gained from our research into therapeutic strategies for effective treatment of lupus.

Education

1999 – 2001 (Master of Science) Department of Biology, Chungnam National University, Korea.
2002 – 2007 (Doctor of Philosophy) Department of Biology, Chungnam National University, Korea
2008 – 2011 Visiting Fellow, Laboratory of Immunogenetics, National Institute of Health (NIH), USA
2015 – 2019 Postdoctoral fellow, Department of Oral Biology, University of Florida, USA
2020 – 2021 Postdoctoral fellow, Department of Pathology, Immunology and Laboratory Medicine, College of Medicine, University of Florida, USA
2021 – 2022 Research Assistant Scientist, Department of Pathology, Immunology and Laboratory Medicine, College of Medicine, University of Florida, USA

Research

Current Active Grants:

1) R01 AI045050 Morel (PI) 6/20/2018 – 5/31/2023 National Institutes of Health Characterization of SLE-susceptibility loci on mouse chromosome 1. Role: co-investigator

2) R01 AI128901 Morel (PI) 9/01/2021-8/31/2026 NIH/NIAID Targeting follicular helper CD4T cells in SLE Renewal. Role: co-investigator

Publications

Complete list of publications:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/1PYuYk4y_nRAnj/bibliography/public/

1) Abboud G, Zhang X, Park YP, Zeumer-Spataro L, Shlomchik MJ, and Morel L. The activation of antigen-specific autoreactive B cells but not CD4⁺ T cells requires glycolysis. In revision.

2) Michikawa C, Gopalakrishnan V, Harrandah AM, Karpinets TV, Garg RR, Chu RA, Park YP, Chukkapallia SS, Yadlapalli N, Erikson-Carter KC, Gleber-Netto FO, Sayour E, Progulske-Fox A, Chan EKL, Wu X, Zhang J, Jobin C, Wargo JA, Pickering CR, Myers JN, Silver N. Fusobacterium is enriched in oral cancer and promotes induction of programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1). Neoplasia. 2022;31:100813. doi: 10.1016/j.neo.2022.100813.

3) Li W, Gong M, Park YP, Elshikha AS, Choi SC, Brown J, Kanda N, Yeh WI, Peters L, Titov AA, Teng X, Brusko TM, Morel L. Lupus susceptibility gene Esrrg modulates regulatory T cells through mitochondrial metabolism. JCI Insight. 2021; 22;6(14). doi: 10.1172/jci.insight.143540.

4) Park YP, Jin L, Bennett KB, Wang D, Fredenburg KM, Tseng JE, Chang LJ, Huang J, Chan EKL. CD70 as a target for chimeric antigen receptor T cells in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. Oral Oncol. 2018;78:145-150.