Pentao Liu is a biologist and a geneticist with a long-standing interest in stem cells, development and immunity. He is most recognized for his work on developing genetic tools for engineering mouse stem cells, discovery of functions of Bcl11a and Bcl11b genes in lymphocyte development, and establishment of expanded potential stem cell. Pentao was born in China. He graduated from Henan Normal University with a BS degree in Biology and from Institute of Genetics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, with MPhil. Pentao received a Ph.D. from Baylor College of Medicine. He did postdoc training at National Cancer Institute USA. Pentao joined the faculty of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, U.K. He was recruited to the Faculty of Medicine of the as a professor. Pentao heads Centre for Translational Stem Cell Biology aiming to develop new stem cell technologies, produce clinically relevant cell products and screen drug candidates.

Research interests

Pentao’s laboratory has developed a widely used approach to rapidly generate conditional knockout alleles in mouse embryonic stem cells for mice, and an efficient six-factor approach to rapidly reprogramme somatic cells to iPSCs. The laboratory investigates transcription factors Bcl11a and Bcl11b in development and in disease, and discovered a new type of cancer cell killers. Pentao’s laboratory used single cell genomics and analysed immune cells and stem cells, including the stem cells with totipotency that the laboratory established. Standard stem cell technologies have failed to derive embryonic stem cell lines from most mammals. Pentao’s EPSC technology on the other hand has successfully derived stem cell lines from all the mammalian species attempted so far: mouse, human, pig, bovine and rabbit. Pentao’s group and the stem cell centre use EPSCs in reproductive biology, cell-based therapy, transgenics, animal cloning, biotechnology and agriculture.