In 1990, he moved to the United States to study at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1995,[1][2] under the supervision of Eli Sercarz.
[3] From 1995 to 1998 he was an Aaron Diamond Postdoctoral Fellow at the New York University School of Medicine,[1] where he conducted research under Dan Littman.
[4] In 2001, Deng was awarded the prestigious Changjiang Professorship by the Chinese government, and returned to China to work at Peking University.
[5] In 2006, he was awarded US$1.9 million by the Grand Challenges In Global Health initiative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, for his research on vaccines for HIV and hepatitis C.[4] He became Director of Peking University's Institute of Stem Cell Research in 2013 and was appointed the Boya Chair Professor in 2016.
[8] Their research demonstrated the safety of CRISPR for humans, although the therapy was not effective for curing AIDS as only 5% to 8% of the patient's bone marrow cells carried the edited CCR5 gene, much lower than the ideal 100%.