Liya Xu received her PhD in Neuroscience from University of Southern California 2010. Subsequently, she joined Biomedical Pioneering Innovation Center (BIOPIC) of Peking University to lead the development of one-step next generation sequencing (NGS) based Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) for simultaneous avoidance of monogenic disease and chromosome abnormality. Since 2017, her collaboration with Dr. Jesse Berry has been focusing on developing aqueous humor (AH) as a surrogate tumor biopsy for retinoblastoma (RB). It holds the potential to unlock a new era of precision medicine that will transform the way to detect RB, guide the management and prognosis for RB and lead to alternative treatment regimens that offer a personalized approach to medicine for these children with a greater chance of saving the eye.

Dr. Xu’s research concentrates on integrating patient, model system, and high-content single particle data to translate clinically observed correlations into a mechanistic understanding of the physical and biological underpinning of the dynamics of ocular cancers, specifically retinoblastoma. Two complementary research projects address the laboratory’s aims of 1) developing the clinical utility of aqueous humors (AH) as liquid biopsy platform for ocular cancer management; and 2) characterizing the tumor circulome of aqueous humor from RB eyes with multi-omics approaches.