Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Contact, publication, and social network information about Harvard faculty and fellows.

David Liu, M.D.

Title
Institution
Department
Address
Phone
Profile Picture

Biography
Stanford UniversityBA06/1999Economics
Stanford UniversityMS03/2001Computer Science
Johns Hopkins School of Public HealthMPH06/2010Biostatistics and Epidemiology
Johns Hopkins University School of MedicineMD05/2011Medicine
Johns Hopkins Hospital06/2014Internal Medicine Residency
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard CancerCare08/2018Hematology/Oncology Fellowship
2002 - 2004
Amazon.com Innovation Awards (x3), US Patent 7,536,322
2010
JHSPH MPH Capstone Award
2012
JHUSOM Medical Student Teaching Award
2015
John R. Svenson Fellowship in Genomic Research
2018
Damon Runyon Physician-Scientist Training Grant
2018
ASCO Young Investigator Award
2018
SITC Cancer Immunotherapy Translational Fellowship
2019
AACR NextGen Stars
2020
ASCI Young Physician-Scientist

Overview
Dr. Liu is a medical oncologist and computational biologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham & Women's Hospital, with a background in computer science, biostatistics, and epidemiology. The Liu lab bridges multiple disciplines, and operates at the intersection of clinical oncology, cancer biology, and computational biology, developing computational approaches to dissect therapeutic resistance and susceptibility to chemo-, targeted-, and immuno-therapies in patient tumors. A focus is on development of rigorous methodologies using statistics and machine-learning techniques applied to specific clinical contexts to discover biologically relevant molecular correlates of response/resistance (for novel therapeutic targets and rational combination therapies) and build clinically relevant predictive models of therapeutic response/resistance. Examples of past work include

(1) development of predictive models of response to PD-1 immune checkpoint blockade in metastatic melanoma integrating clinical, genomic, and transcriptomic features (Liu, Schilling et al Nat Medicine 2019)
(2) validation of mutations in ERCC2 (gene necessary for nucleotide excision DNA repair) as marker of susceptibility to cisplatin-based chemotherapy in muscle-invasive bladder cancer, leading to clinical trials in progress (Liu et al JAMA Onc 2016; Li et al Clin Canc Res 2019)
(3) discovering a novel class of chromatin-modulating gene mutations as drivers of oncogenesis in a standardized meta-analysis of over 1000 prostate cancers (Armenia*, Wankowic*, Liu* et al Nat Gen 2018) *co-first author
(4) de novo discovery of a cisplatin-induced mutational signature in pre- and post-cisplatin treated bladder cancers, later validated in platinum-treated lung and ovarian cancers (Liu et al Nat Comm 2017)
(5) in the same cohort, discovery of intratumoral heterogeneity and multiple gene mutations as molecular correlates of survival and therapeutic resistance (Liu et al Nat Comm 2017)
(6) dissection of immunological correlates to a signature of mismatch repair deficiency in prostate cancer (Nava Rodrigues*, Rescigno*, Liu* et al JCI 2018) *co-first author
(7) elucidating evolution of therapeutic resistance and tumor heterogeneity from 23 tumor samples from a melanoma delayed exceptional responder to sequential immune checkpoint blockade collected over 6 years (Liu et al, under review)

Two broad areas of inquiry exist in the lab:

1. Development of parsimonious, biologically-informed predictive models utilizing statistical and machine learning approaches and integrating clinical and molecular data to guide clinical management.

2. Mapping of clinical tumor heterogeneity and evolution of resistance and metastasis, using longitudinally collected tumor samples from patients over time, treatments, development of resistance, and from different metastatic sites to develop insight into drivers of resistance and metastasis.

Current list of publications:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/david.liu.4/bibliography/public/

Research
The research activities and funding listed below are automatically derived from NIH ExPORTER and other sources, which might result in incorrect or missing items. Faculty can login to make corrections and additions.
  1. (David Liu) Jul 1, 2020 - Jun 30, 2023
    Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
    Dissecting Tumor and Immune Evolution in Stage III Melanoma
    Role: Principal Investigator
  2. (BOLAND, GENEVIEVE) Mar 1, 2019 - Feb 28, 2021
    Melanoma Research Foundation
    Characterizing the Role of the Hippo Pathway during Melanoma Immunotherapy
    Role: Co-Investigator
  3. K08CA234458 (LIU, DAVID) Sep 18, 2018 - Aug 31, 2023
    NIH
    Dissecting Therapeutic Resistance and Progression in Metastatic Melanoma Through Clinical Computational Oncology
    Role: Principal Investigator
  4. (LIU, DAVID) Jul 1, 2018 - Jun 30, 2021
    Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer - BMS
    Dissecting Differential Response to Immunotherapy in Melanoma through Clinical Computational Oncology
    Role: Principal Investigator
  5. (LIU, DAVID) Jul 1, 2018 - Jun 30, 2019
    Conquer Cancer Foundation/ASCO
    Dissecting Response and Resistance to Immune and Targeted Therapies in Metastatic Melanoma Through Clinical Computational Oncology
    Role: Principal Investigator

Bibliographic
Publications listed below are automatically derived from MEDLINE/PubMed and other sources, which might result in incorrect or missing publications. Faculty can login to make corrections and additions.
Newest   |   Oldest   |   Most Cited   |   Most Discussed   |   Timeline   |   Field Summary   |   Plain Text
PMC Citations indicate the number of times the publication was cited by articles in PubMed Central, and the Altmetric score represents citations in news articles and social media. (Note that publications are often cited in additional ways that are not shown here.) Fields are based on how the National Library of Medicine (NLM) classifies the publication's journal and might not represent the specific topic of the publication. Translation tags are based on the publication type and the MeSH terms NLM assigns to the publication. Some publications (especially newer ones and publications not in PubMed) might not yet be assigned Field or Translation tags.) Click a Field or Translation tag to filter the publications.
Updating...
This operation might take several minutes to complete. Please do not close your browser.
Local representatives can answer questions about the Profiles website or help with editing a profile or issues with profile data. For assistance with this profile: HMS/HSDM faculty should contact contactcatalyst.harvard.edu. For faculty or fellow appointment updates and changes, please ask your appointing department to contact HMS. For fellow personal and demographic information, contact HMS Human Resources at human_resourceshms.harvard.edu. For faculty personal and demographic information, contact HMS Office for Faculty Affairs at facappthms.harvard.edu.
Liu's Networks
Click the
Explore
buttons for more information and interactive visualizations!
Concepts (170)
Explore
_
Co-Authors (115)
Explore
_
Similar People (60)
Explore
_
Same Department 
Explore
_
Funded by the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences through its Clinical and Translational Science Awards Program, grant number UL1TR002541.