Liming Pei

Liming Pei, Ph.D., serves as Associate Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), where he directs a research program focused on inter-organ communication in metabolic homeostasis. His laboratory investigates how the heart functions as an endocrine organ, employs single-cell multiomics to decode cardiac development and disease, and elucidates cell-type-specific metabolic regulation through nuclear receptors like ERRγ.

Dr. Pei earned his B.S. from the University of Science and Technology of China (2000) and Ph.D. from UCLA (2006), followed by postdoctoral training at the Salk Institute. He joined CHOP/UPenn in 2013 as Assistant Professor before promotion to Associate Professor.

His research spans three synergistic domains: (1) Cardiac endocrinology, where his team discovered GDF15 as a heart-derived hormone regulating body growth and liver metabolism, explaining failure-to-thrive in pediatric heart disease; (2) Single-cell multiomics, pioneering snRNA-Seq in cardiac research to build human heart atlases through NIH HuBMAP and study Fontan-associated liver disease; (3) Mitochondrial metabolism, identifying ERRγ as a master regulator of cell-type-specific energy pathways essential for cardiac, neuronal, and renal function. His work employs proximity labeling, single-nucleus sequencing, and transgenic models to uncover fundamental mechanisms with therapeutic implications.

Recent publications reveal his lab's dominance in cardiac multiomics, with 2024-2025 studies on Fontan physiology, mitochondrial heteroplasmy, and ERRγ-targeted heart failure therapies appearing in Science Translational Medicine and Nature Cell Biology. His work demonstrates consistent innovation in linking molecular mechanisms to clinical metabolic and cardiac disorders.

Funded by multiple NIH grants and Department of Defense awards, Dr. Pei actively mentors postdoctoral fellows and graduate students through CHOP/UPenn training programs. His lab offers rotation projects in cardiac hormone discovery, single-cell atlas development, and mitochondrial disease modeling, emphasizing computational and experimental integration.

The Pei Lab operates within CHOP's Center for Spatial and Functional Genomics, collaborating with UPenn's Institute for Diabetes Obesity and Metabolism and the Cardiovascular Institute. Current initiatives include developing ERRγ-based therapies for kidney disease and expanding the understanding of heart-liver metabolic crosstalk through clinical-translational partnerships.