Dr. Kelvin Zewen Tuong

BBiomedSc, PhD

Senior Research Fellow/Group Leader

    Projects

    About me

    Dr. Kelvin Tuong is a Senior Research Fellow/Group Leader at the Ian Frazer Centre for Children’s Immunotherapy Research (IFCCIR), Child Health Research Centre. He is interested in single-cell analysis of immune cells and harnessing adaptive immune receptors for understanding immune cell development and function in health and in cancer.

    Dr. Tuong was born and raised in Singapore and moved to Brisbane, Australia, after completing national service in Singapore and obtaining a Diploma in Biomedical Laboratory Technology (Ngee Ann Polytechnic).

    Dr. Tuong was originally trained as a molecular cell biologist and gradually transitioned into bioinformatics during his post-doctoral training. He has been very prolific for an early career researcher, having published >50 articles since 2013, with nearly a third of them as first/co-first or last author and has a stellar track record of pushing out highly collaborative work in prestigious journals including Nature, Cell, Science, Nature Medicine, J Exp Med etc. He has the rare combination of having excellent laboratory and bioinformatics skill sets which provide him a strong command of both fundamental immunology and computational approaches.

    At UQ, Dr. Tuong completed his undergraduate Bachelor's degree in Biomedical science with Class I Honours. Dr. Tuong subsequently attained his PhD in macrophage cell biology and endocrinology at UQ (Prof. Jenny Stow lab and Emiritus Prof. George Muscat lab, IMB, UQ) and went on to a post-doc position with Emiritus Prof. Ian Frazer (co-inventor of the Gardasil cervical cancer vaccine, UQ Diamantina Institute, Translational Research Institute) where he worked on HPV immunology, cervical cancer and skin cancer. In his time in the Frazer lab, he developed an interest in bioinformatics analyses as a means to tackle and understanding immunology problems in health and disease. He then joined Prof. Menna Clatworthy's lab at the University of Cambridge, with a visiting appointment at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute with the Teichmann lab. He has focused his interests on single-cell analyses of tissue resident macrophages and B cells in health and disease. He has also developed bespoke bioinformatics software, including one tailored for single-cell B Cell Receptor sequencing analysis, which he used in one of the largest combined single-cell transcriptomic, surface proteomic and TCR/BCR sequencing dataset in the world, published in Nature Medicine and recently in Nature Biotechnology.

    Dr. Tuong is now leading the Computational Immunology group at the IFCCIR and his lab is focused on investigating how pediatric immunity is perturbed during cancer at the cellular level and how this information can be used for creating novel warning systems for children with cancer. For potential students/post-docs/trainees interested in joining the team, please contact Dr. Tuong at [email protected].

    Publications

    He, P., Lim, K., Sun, D., Pett, J.P., Jeng, Q., Polanski, K., Dong, Z., Bolt, L., Richardson, L., Mamanova, L., Dabrowska, M., Wilbrey-Clark, A., Madissoon, E., Tuong, Z.K., Dann, E., Suo, C., Goh, I., Yoshida, M., Nikolic, M.Z., Janes, S.M., He, X., Barker, R.A., Teichmann, S.A., Marioni, J.C., Meyer, K.B., and Rawlins, E.L. (2022). A human fetal lung cell atlas uncovers proximal-distal gradients of differentiation and key regulators of epithelial fates. Cell 185, 4841-4860 e4825. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2022.11.005

    Guo, S.A., Bowyer, G.S., Ferdinand, J.R., Maes, M., Tuong, Z.K., Gillman, E., Liao, M., Lindeboom, R.G.H., Yoshida, M., Worlock, K., Gopee, H., Stephenson, E., Gao, C.A., Lyons, P.A., Smith, K.G.C., Haniffa, M., Meyer, K.B., Nikolic, M.Z., Zhang, Z., Wunderink, R.G., Misharin, A.V., Dougan, G., Navapurkar, V., Teichmann, S.A., Conway Morris, A., and Clatworthy, M.R. (2022). Obesity Is Associated with Attenuated Tissue Immunity in COVID-19. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. doi:10.1164/rccm.202204-0751OC

    Richoz, N., Tuong, Z.K., Loudon, K.W., Patino-Martinez, E., Ferdinand, J.R., Portet, A., Bashant, K.R., Thevenon, E., Rucci, F., Hoyler, T., Junt, T., Kaplan, M.J., Siegel, R.M., and Clatworthy, M.R. (2022). Distinct pathogenic roles for resident and monocyte-derived macrophages in lupus nephritis. JCI Insight 7. doi:10.1172/jci.insight.159751

    Li, Z., Tuong, Z.K., Dean, I., Willis, C., Gaspal, F., Fiancette, R., Idris, S., Kennedy, B., Ferdinand, J.R., Penalver, A., Cabantous, M., Murtuza Baker, S., Fry, J.W., Carlesso, G., Hammond, S.A., Dovedi, S.J., Hepworth, M.R., Clatworthy, M.R., and Withers, D.R. (2022). In vivo labeling reveals continuous trafficking of TCF-1+ T cells between tumor and lymphoid tissue. J Exp Med 219. doi:10.1084/jem.20210749

    Suo, C., Dann, E., Goh, I., Jardine, L., Kleshchevnikov, V., Park, J.E., Botting, R.A., Stephenson, E., Engelbert, J., Tuong, Z.K., Polanski, K., Yayon, N., Xu, C., Suchanek, O., Elmentaite, R., Dominguez Conde, C., He, P., Pritchard, S., Miah, M., Moldovan, C., Steemers, A.S., Mazin, P., Prete, M., Horsfall, D., Marioni, J.C., Clatworthy, M.R., Haniffa, M., and Teichmann, S.A. (2022). Mapping the developing human immune system across organs. Science 376, eabo0510. doi:10.1126/science.abo0510

    Dominguez Conde, C., Xu, C., Jarvis, L.B., Rainbow, D.B., Wells, S.B., Gomes, T., Howlett, S.K., Suchanek, O., Polanski, K., King, H.W., Mamanova, L., Huang, N., Szabo, P.A., Richardson, L., Bolt, L., Fasouli, E.S., Mahbubani, K.T., Prete, M., Tuck, L., Richoz, N., Tuong, Z.K., Campos, L., Mousa, H.S., Needham, E.J., Pritchard, S., Li, T., Elmentaite, R., Park, J., Rahmani, E., Chen, D., Menon, D.K., Bayraktar, O.A., James, L.K., Meyer, K.B., Yosef, N., Clatworthy, M.R., Sims, P.A., Farber, D.L., Saeb-Parsy, K., Jones, J.L., and Teichmann, S.A. (2022). Cross-tissue immune cell analysis reveals tissue-specific features in humans. Science 376, eabl5197. doi:10.1126/science.abl5197

    Uzzan, M., Martin, J.C., Mesin, L., Livanos, A.E., Castro-Dopico, T., Huang, R., Petralia, F., Magri, G., Kumar, S., Zhao, Q., Rosenstein, A.K., Tokuyama, M., Sharma, K., Ungaro, R., Kosoy, R., Jha, D., Fischer, J., Singh, H., Keir, M.E., Ramamoorthi, N., Gorman, W.E.O., Cohen, B.L., Rahman, A., Cossarini, F., Seki, A., Leyre, L., Vaquero, S.T., Gurunathan, S., Grasset, E.K., Losic, B., Dubinsky, M., Greenstein, A.J., Gottlieb, Z., Legnani, P., George, J., Irizar, H., Stojmirovic, A., Brodmerkel, C., Kasarkis, A., Sands, B.E., Furtado, G., Lira, S.A., Tuong, Z.K., Ko, H.M., Cerutti, A., Elson, C.O., Clatworthy, M.R., Merad, M., Suarez-Farinas, M., Argmann, C., Hackney, J.A., Victora, G.D., Randolph, G.J., Kenigsberg, E., Colombel, J.F., and Mehandru, S. (2022). Ulcerative colitis is characterized by a plasmablast-skewed humoral response associated with disease activity. Nat Med 28, 766-779. doi:10.1038/s41591-022-01680-y

    Kotagiri, P., Mescia, F., Hanson, A.L., Turner, L., Bergamaschi, L., Penalver, A., Richoz, N., Moore, S.D., Ortmann, B.M., Dunmore, B.J., Morgan, M.D., Tuong, Z.K., Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic, I., Infectious Disease-National Institute of Health Research, C.B.C., Gottgens, B., Toshner, M., Hess, C., Maxwell, P.H., Clatworthy, M.R., Nathan, J.A., Bradley, J.R., Lyons, P.A., Burrows, N., and Smith, K.G.C. (2022). The impact of hypoxia on B cells in COVID-19. EBioMedicine 77, 103878. doi:10.1016/j.ebiom.2022.103878

    Kotagiri, P., Mescia, F., Rae, W.M., Bergamaschi, L., Tuong, Z.K., Turner, L., Hunter, K., Gerber, P.P., Hosmillo, M., Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic, I., Infectious Disease-National Institute of Health Research, C.B.C., Hess, C., Clatworthy, M.R., Goodfellow, I.G., Matheson, N.J., McKinney, E.F., Wills, M.R., Gupta, R.K., Bradley, J.R., Bashford-Rogers, R.J.M., Lyons, P.A., and Smith, K.G.C. (2022). B cell receptor repertoire kinetics after SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination. Cell Rep 38, 110393. doi:10.1016/j.celrep.2022.110393

    Tuong, Z.K., Stewart, B.J., Guo, S.A., and Clatworthy, M.R. (2022). Epigenetics and tissue immunity-Translating environmental cues into functional adaptations. Immunol Rev 305, 111-136. doi:10.1111/imr.13036

    Tuong, Z.K., Loudon, K.W., Berry, B., Richoz, N., Jones, J., Tan, X., Nguyen, Q., George, A., Hori, S., Field, S., Lynch, A.G., Kania, K., Coupland, P., Babbage, A., Grenfell, R., Barrett, T., Warren, A.Y., Gnanapragasam, V., Massie, C., and Clatworthy, M.R. (2021). Resolving the immune landscape of human prostate at a single-cell level in health and cancer. Cell Rep 37, 110132. doi:10.1016/j.celrep.2021.110132

    Zhao, T.X., Sriranjan, R.S., Tuong, Z.K., Lu, Y., Sage, A.P., Nus, M., Hubsch, A., Kaloyirou, F., Vamvaka, E., Helmy, J., Kostapanos, M., Jalaludeen, N., Klatzmann, D., Tedgui, A., Rudd, J.H.F., Horton, S.J., Huntly, B.J.P., Hoole, S.P., Bond, S.P., Clatworthy, M.R., Cheriyan, J., and Mallat, Z. (2022). Regulatory T-Cell Response to Low-Dose Interleukin-2 in Ischemic Heart Disease. NEJM Evidence 1. doi:10.1056/EVIDoa2100009

    Mulderrig, L., Garaycoechea, J.I., Tuong, Z.K., Millington, C.L., Dingler, F.A., Ferdinand, J.R., Gaul, L., Tadross, J.A., Arends, M.J., O'Rahilly, S., Crossan, G.P., Clatworthy, M.R., and Patel, K.J. (2021). Aldehyde-driven transcriptional stress triggers an anorexic DNA damage response. Nature 600, 158-163. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-04133-7

    Tuong, Z.K., Lukowski, S.W., Nguyen, Q.H., Chandra, J., Zhou, C., Gillinder, K., Bashaw, A.A., Ferdinand, J.R., Stewart, B.J., Teoh, S.M., Hanson, S.J., Devitt, K., Clatworthy, M.R., Powell, J.E., and Frazer, I.H. (2021). A model of impaired Langerhans cell maturation associated with HPV induced epithelial hyperplasia. iScience 24, 103326. doi:10.1016/j.isci.2021.103326

    Stephenson, E., Reynolds, G., Botting, R.A., Calero-Nieto, F.J., Morgan, M.D., Tuong, Z.K., Bach, K., Sungnak, W., Worlock, K.B., Yoshida, M., Kumasaka, N., Kania, K., Engelbert, J., Olabi, B., Spegarova, J.S., Wilson, N.K., Mende, N., Jardine, L., Gardner, L.C.S., Goh, I., Horsfall, D., McGrath, J., Webb, S., Mather, M.W., Lindeboom, R.G.H., Dann, E., Huang, N., Polanski, K., Prigmore, E., Gothe, F., Scott, J., Payne, R.P., Baker, K.F., Hanrath, A.T., Schim van der Loeff, I.C.D., Barr, A.S., Sanchez-Gonzalez, A., Bergamaschi, L., Mescia, F., Barnes, J.L., Kilich, E., de Wilton, A., Saigal, A., Saleh, A., Janes, S.M., Smith, C.M., Gopee, N., Wilson, C., Coupland, P., Coxhead, J.M., Kiselev, V.Y., van Dongen, S., Bacardit, J., King, H.W., Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic, I., Infectious Disease-National Institute of Health Research, C.-B.C., Rostron, A.J., Simpson, A.J., Hambleton, S., Laurenti, E., Lyons, P.A., Meyer, K.B., Nikolic, M.Z., Duncan, C.J.A., Smith, K.G.C., Teichmann, S.A., Clatworthy, M.R., Marioni, J.C., Gottgens, B., and Haniffa, M. (2021). Single-cell multi-omics analysis of the immune response in COVID-19. Nat Med 27, 904-916. doi:10.1038/s41591-021-01329-2

    Zhou, C., Tuong, Z.K., and Frazer, I.H. (2019). Papillomavirus Immune Evasion Strategies Target the Infected Cell and the Local Immune System. Front Oncol 9, 682. doi:10.3389/fonc.2019.00682

    Fitzpatrick, Z., Frazer, G., Ferro, A., Clare, S., Bouladoux, N., Ferdinand, J., Tuong, Z.K., Negro-Demontel, M.L., Kumar, N., Suchanek, O., Tajsic, T., Harcourt, K., Scott, K., Bashford-Rogers, R., Helmy, A., Reich, D.S., Belkaid, Y., Lawley, T.D., McGavern, D.B., and Clatworthy, M.R. (2020). Gut-educated IgA plasma cells defend the meningeal venous sinuses. Nature 587, 472-476. doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2886-4

    Research fields

    BCR, TCR, Single-cell sequencing

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