Department of Immunology
Pengyan Xia
Xia Pengyan, Research fellow (PhD Supervisor)
Contact Information
Research Direction
(1) Discovery of novel pattern recognition receptors and identification of new characteristic pathogen molecules.
(2) Exploration of the activation mechanisms of the NLRP3 inflammasome and its roles in enteritis and skin inflammation.
Personal Profile
Dr. Pengyan Xia joined the Department of Immunology, Peking University Health Science Center (PUHSC) as a Principal Investigator and doctoral supervisor in December 2018. He received the Beijing Outstanding Young Scientist Foundation Award in 2023 and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Excellent Young Scientist Award in 2019. Dr. Xia has been honored with numerous awards, including:5th PUHSC Youth Science and Technology Award (2023), Peking University Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Supervisor Award (2023), PUHSC Teaching Excellence Award (2023), PUHSC Teaching Achievement Award (Third Prize, 2022), PUHSC School of Basic Medical Sciences Outstanding Teacher Award (2021), Beijing Natural Science Award (Second Prize, 2021), Fok Ying Tung Education Foundation Young Teacher Award (2020), Peking University Green Leaf Biopharmaceutical Outstanding Young Scholar Award (2020), Peking University Boya Young Scholar (2020), PUHSC School of Basic Medical Sciences Young Teacher Award (2019), PUHSC School of Basic Medical Sciences "Three-Wide Education" Award (2019), Beijing Science and Technology Award (First Prize, 2018). He has participated in multiple key projects funded by the NSFC and the Ministry of Science and Technology. Dr. Xia's research primarily focuses on the molecular mechanisms underlying innate immune cell responses to pathogenic microbial infections. He has published multiple papers as corresponding author and first author in prestigious journals including Immunity, Nat Chem Biol, Cell Host Microbe, Nat Commun, and EMBO J. Key discoveries include: Identifying the orphan receptor Nur77 as highly expressed in macrophages, binding LPS, and initiating non-canonical NLRP3 inflammasome activation (Immunity, 2023); Demonstrating that ADCY7 catalyzes the generation of c-di-AMP, triggering NLRP3 inflammasome activation (Nat Chem Biol, 2025); Discovering that the lipolytic enzyme ATGL recognizes and hydrolyzes LPS to prevent excessive immune responses caused by intracellular LPS (Nat Chem Biol, 2024); Revealing that the nuclear protein TET3 senses HSV-specific proteins and activates a nuclear inflammasome (Cell Mol Immunol, 2024); Showing that the neuropeptide CGRP enters macrophages during infection, binding to the NLRP3 LRR domain and competitively displacing NEK7 to prevent NLRP3 activation (Cell Mol Immunol, 2023); Uncovering the molecular mechanism by which the SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid (N) protein binds GSDMD to inhibit pyroptosis (EMBO J, 2021).