Dr Allen Cheung's PhD work involved identifying a unique subset of viral genes expressed by human cytomegalovirus latent infection of CD34+ hematopoietic myeloid progenitor cells using viral custom-made microarrays. One of these genes (UL111A/viral homolog of humanIL-10) downregulates MHC class II molecules to prevent T cell recognition; these work resulted in two publications in Blood.
In his postdoc in Tokyo, he was involved in delineating the mechanism by which T cells produce IFN-γ following IL-12/STAT4 stimulation. During his time in HKU, he was involved in solving the underlying mechanism of two novel vaccines (J Clin Invest and Mol Therapy), as well as the interplay between CMV and HIV co-infection in CD34+ stem cells (Blood Advances). Moreover, I identified and characterised a novel PD-1 isoform (Delta42PD1) and found its cognate receptor to be TLR4, which underlie gut inflammation during acute HIV-1 infection (Nature Microbiology).