Rate My Professor Meng Zhao

Meng Zhao, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor and Assistant Member in the Arthritis and Clinical Immunology Research Program at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (OMRF) in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She joined OMRF in January 2020 after serving as a postdoctoral fellow and instructor in the Department of Developmental Immunology at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology in La Jolla, California. Zhao received her Bachelor of Science degree from Wuhan University in China in 2004 and her Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas in 2010. Her research centers on immunometabolism, investigating the metabolic regulation of innate-like T cells, particularly invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells. As part of OMRF's Center for Cellular Metabolism Research in Oklahoma (CMRO), she leads the project "Metabolic regulation of iNKT cells." Zhao's work explores the roles of mitochondria in immune cell functions beyond energy production, including their contributions to T cell responses in autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, infections, cancer development, and tissue inflammation. Her studies aim to identify new ways to regulate T cell function for next-generation precision medicine.

In 2023, Zhao secured her first independent National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding through a five-year, $2.1 million Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA; grant number 1R35GM147713-01) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. This award supports her investigations into mitochondrial influences on T cell metabolism and function in autoimmune contexts. Zhao has published key peer-reviewed articles, including "Gpx4 Regulates Invariant NKT Cell Homeostasis and Function by Preventing Lipid Peroxidation and Ferroptosis" in the Journal of Immunology (2024), "Innate-like T Cells: Connecting the Dots Linking Microscopic Intestinal Inflammation to Spondyloarthritis" in Arthritis & Rheumatology (2023), "P-glycoprotein Expression Skews Mitochondrial Dye Measurements in T Cells" in Frontiers in Immunology (2025), "Distal Lck Promoter-Driven Cre Shows Cell Type-Specific Function in Innate-like T Cells" in ImmunoHorizons (2021), "Calcium Signals Regulate the Functional Differentiation of Invariant Natural Killer T Cells" in The EMBO Journal (2021), "Non-proteolytic Ubiquitination of OTULIN Regulates NF-κB Signaling Pathway" in Journal of Molecular Cell Biology (2020), "TRIM41-Mediated Ubiquitination of Nucleoprotein Limits Influenza A Virus Infection" in Journal of Virology (2018), and "Influenza A Virus-Host Protein Interactions Control Viral Pathogenesis" in International Journal of Molecular Sciences (2017).