Liang Deng, MD, PhD

President
2024-2026

Dr. Liang Deng received her B.S. degree from the University of Rochester, and her PhD and MD degrees from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) and Weill Cornell Medical College. She is currently an Associate Member and Associate Attending Physician at MSKCC, a lifetime member of CAHON. She is a board-certified dermatologist specializing in melanoma and viral-associated skin malignancies. Her laboratory research has been focused on studying virus-host interaction and the development of vaccinia-based cancer immunotherapeutics and vaccines. Her previous work demonstrated that intratumoral injection of inactivated modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA) turns “cold” tumors into “hot” tumors, which results in enhanced responsiveness to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy. Based on these findings, her research program focuses on developing recombinant MVA or vaccinia to elicit strong “in situ vaccination” effects either used alone or in combination with ICB. Her research has been supported by the NIH, the Dermatology Foundation, American Skin Association, Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, Technology Development Award at MSKCC, and IMVAQ Therapeutics, a biotech company she and her colleagues at MSKCC co-founded. Dr. Deng has served as reviewers for many journals, including Nature Medicine, Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer, Frontiers in Immunology, Cancer Immunology Research, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Hematology and Oncology, Journal of Investigative Dermatology, PLOS Pathogens, and Journal of Virology, etc. Dr. Deng is passionate about mentoring the next generation of clinicians and physician-scientists.