Deng Hongkui

Deng Hongkui is a Chinese immunologist and stem cell researcher. He is a Changjiang Professor, the Boya Chair Professor, and Director of the Institute of Stem Cell Research at Peking University. He was awarded US$1.9 million by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for his research on vaccines for HIV and hepatitis C. In 2017, he and Chen Hu engineered resistance to HIV in mice using CRISPR gene editing, and for the first time used the technique on an AIDS patient.

Biography Deng Hongkui entered Wuhan University in 1980, where he earned his B.Sc. in 1984. He then studied at Shanghai Second Medical College and earned his master's degree in 1987. In 1990, he moved to the United States to study at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1995, under the supervision of Eli Sercarz. From 1995 to 1998 he was an Aaron Diamond Postdoctoral Fellow at the New York University School of Medicine, In 2006, he was awarded US$1.9 million by the Grand Challenges In Global Health initiative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, for his research on vaccines for HIV and hepatitis C. They subsequently used the technique to treat an AIDS patient who suffered from acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). It was the first time CRISPR was used on a human HIV patient. 19 months later, the patient's ALL was in complete remission. Their findings were published in The New England Journal of Medicine in September 2019.