Profile
Yuxuan (Phoenix) Miao
Assistant Professor
Ben May Department for Cancer Research and the College
Yuxuan Miao’s research focuses on understanding how normal and cancerous epithelial tissue adapt to inflammation, with a special interest in dissecting how stem cells residing in these tissues interact with the immune system to maintain tissue fitness and achieve cancer immune evasion. His laboratory uses skin as a model system and—by integrating sophisticated mouse genetics, functional (epi)genomics, quantitative immunological approaches, and advanced imaging techniques—explores how stem cells are intrinsically wired to modulate and adapt to inflammation, how they sculpture their immunological microenvironment, and how the immune system promotes the physiology of tissue stem cells. The ultimate goal of his research is to leverage the information derived from these studies to improve current regenerative medicine and to develop more effective cancer immunotherapies.
His work has been published in the journals Cell, Science, Immunity, Nature Immunology, Cell Host & Microbe, Nature Cell Biology, and Nature Reviews Immunology.
Miao holds a PhD in molecular genetics and microbiology from Duke University, and completed his postdoctoral training as a Jane Coffin Childs Fellow at the Rockefeller University.