Chiang Lab
Welcome
Image-guided cancer therapy, from the patient to the bench and back
The Chiang Lab is a multi-disciplinary group in the Department of Radiological Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. In the hospital, we use minimally-invasive image-guided approaches to treat solid cancers; in the lab, we combine engineering with immune, metabolomic, and epigenetic approaches to overcome the limitations of current therapies. The bench-to-bedside distance is intentionally short. Every project here is designed to ultimately affect patient care and improve patient outcomes.
What we work on
Why tumors survive ablation, and how to stop them. Thermal ablation controls early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma well, but the heat from the antenna falls off sharply at the margin, leaving a rim of tumor cells exposed to sublethal hyperthermia. We study what happens to the cells in that rim, specifically the metabolic signatures that precede tumor recurrence, and the proteins that let a tumor withstand heat it should not survive. The goal of this project is to predict which tumors will come back before they do.
Combining thermal ablation and embolization with next-generation therapies. Sublethal heat and radiation do not simply leave tumor cells alive; it changes them, upregulating factors that enable them to hide from the immune system. We are working out how to restore immune surveillance of these residual tumor cells with local delivery of natural killer cell-based immunotherapy as well as antibody-drug conjugates.
Microbubbles that know where to go. Microbubbles are already in clinical use as non-invasive ultrasound contrast agents, which makes them an unusually practical vehicle for targeted imaging and drug delivery. We label them site-specifically with antibodies against tumor markers so that the microbubbles can find these tumors, letting clinicians know what tumor surface markers exist without biopsy.
Better dosimetry for Y90. Yttrium-90 (Y90) radioembolization is a common procedure used to treat solid tumors of the liver. However, it is currently unclear where the Y90 beads actually end up due to limited information about blood flow hemodynamics. We are building tools that use artificial intelligence and flow modeling to predict how Y90 dose actually distributes between tumor and normal liver in an individual patient, so that the prescribed dose fits the patient rather than a population average.
News
July 9, 2026
Congratulations to Edward Sher for passing his Oral Qualifying Exam!
- "Trop-2-targeted molecular imaging and therapeutic delivery strategies for ovarian cancer"
June 5, 2026
Excellent showing from our superstar students Edward Sher, MS and Cathy Chen, PhD for getting first and second place in the Basic Science category for the UCLA School of Dentistry Science Day!
- "Evaluating Trop-2 Targetability for Microbubble Imaging and Antibody-Based Therapy in Ovarian Cancer" (Edward Sher)
A Porcine Model for Local Delivery of Allogeneic Natural Killer Cell-Based Immunotherapy" (Cathy Chen, PhD)
June 2, 2026
Our lab was recently awarded an R01 to study Y90 radioembolization in liver cancer!
June 1, 2026
Congratulations to our recent graduates!
- Tu Nguyen, MD - UCSD Interventional Radiology Resident, T32 Research Track
- Kayla Kaplin MD - University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine
May 4, 2026
Exciting news coming in the next couple of weeks, but can't release it yet!
October 23, 2025
Not all of our work is in basic science! Recent press release on our work for triaging on call cases in interventional radiology.
http://irq.sirweb.org/clinical-practice/the-trouble-with-triage/
September 18, 2025
The Chiang Lab offers a new on-site core service for the busy researcher - Weddings. Congratulations to Cathy for getting married!~
August 22, 2025
Check out our commentary on Radiology: Imaging Cancer with Dr. Justin Lee.
https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/full/10.1148/rycan.250340
August 1, 2025
We finally got the notice that our NIH R21 Trailblazer award with Dr. James Hui got funded! Go team!
Press release: https://www.uclahealth.org/news/release/drs-chiang-and-hui-receive-nih-trailblazer-award-advance
July 11, 2025
Recent press release from the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center highlighting our work on post-ablation resistance from 4th year med student Tu Nguyen.
UCLA study identifies key protein that helps liver cancer resist heat-based treatment
A new study led by investigators at the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center may help explain why certain liver tumors return quickly after thermal ablation, a widely used minimally-invasive, image-guided technique that kills cancer cells by applying intense heat through a needle-like probe.
https://www.uclahealth.org/news/release/ucla-study-identifies-key-protein-helps-liver-cancer-resist
June 23, 2025
Congratulations to recent lab graduates: Justin Lee, MD, PhD (David Geffen School of Medicine), Cathy Chen (PhD in the School of Dentistry), Aravinth Ruppa (UCLA B.S.), and Hannah Mirmohammadi (B.S UCLA).
Go out into the world and make us proud!
May 20, 2025
Undergraduates Aravinth Ruppa, Veronica Hankil, and Hannah Mirmohammadi for their excellent posters that were presented at the Undergraduate Research Week Symposium. Their research highlights the exciting breadth of our work in minimally invasive cancer diagnosis and therapy.
Aravinth Ruppa - Microbubbles enable Site-Specific Binding to GPC3 Positive Hepatoma Cells
Veronica Hankil - Tumor-to-Normal Ratio and Microsphere Density Impact on Progression-Free Survival After Yttrium-90 Radioembolization
Hannah Mirmohammadi - Clinically-Relevant Superparamagnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticle-Loading of Primary Natural Killer Cell-Based Immunotherapy
February 15, 2025
We were recently awarded the UCLA OPSCD Bridge Grant entitled "Accelerating clinical translation of site-specific antibody-labeling microbubbles" - Let's go!
December 1, 2025
Welcome Yong to our lab! He brings in breadth of experience in epigenetics of cancer to our group
November 12, 2024
Cathy Chen has won the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center travel award for her upcoming talk at the Radological Society of North America (RSNA) titled “NK Cell Infusion Enhances Tumor Control after Ablation-associated Sub-lethal Hyperthermia in vitro and in vivo: Implications of MHC-I shedding"
June 27, 2024
Our lab was just awarded a UCLA CTSI Core Voucher for the project "High-Dimensional Immune Profiling using CyTOF to characterize the effect of locoregional therapy on an Oncopig Liver Tumor Model." We will be working with the JCCC Flow Cytometry Core to build this new platform for pig immune analysis.
May 8, 2024
Congratulations to our medical student Tu Nguyen for being award the RSNA Research and Education Foundation's Medical Student grant, titled "Correlating pre-ablation metabolic signatures with post-ablation recurrence in HCC". Many future publications and grants coming out of this project!
March 24, 2024
Thermal ablation with NK-cell based immunotherapy may improve HCC outcomes
While thermal ablation currently provides excellent outcomes for early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), a new study indicates that applying nonlethal hyperthermia may also improve natural killer (NK) cell cytotoxicity and effect better outcomes for multiple HCC cell lines.
Cathy Chen's work on NK cell therapy was presented at the 2024 SIR meeting and profiled in the SIR newsletter. Great work Cathy!
November 26, 2023
RSNA abstracts were successfully presented, and congrats to Abi for being awarded the RSNA Trainee Research Prize
October 26, 2023
Characterizing hepatocellular carcinoma stem markers and their corresponding susceptibility to NK-cell based immunotherapy
Hot off the press! Our paper on HCC stem cell was published in Frontiers of Immunology
June 10, 2023
Our RSNA Research Scholar grant "Augmenting Microwave Ablation with Supercharged NK cells in an Oncopig Liver Tumor Model" was just awarded! Thank you RSNA for funding this important work that will accelerate IR's role in developing next generation cell-based immunotherapies.
September, 2022
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