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! Read the article
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
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. Read the article
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. Read the article
August 1, 2025
We finally got the notice that our NIH R21 Trailblazer award with Dr. James Hui got funded! Go team! Press Release
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. Read the article
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
We were recently awarded the UCLA OPSCD Bridge Grant entitled "Accelerating clinical translation of site-specific antibody-labeling microbubbles" - Let's go!
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, 2024
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
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. Thermal ablation with NK-cell based immunotherapy may improve HCC outcomes.
Cathy Chen's work on NK cell therapy was presented at the 2024 SIR meeting and profiled in the SIR newsletter. Great work Cathy! Read the article
November 26, 2023
RSNA abstracts were successfully presented, and congrats to Abi for being awarded the RSNA Trainee Research Prize!
October 26, 2023
Hot off the press! Our paper on HCC stem cell was published in Frontiers of Immunology. Characterizing hepatocellular carcinoma stem markers and their corresponding susceptibility to NK-cell based immunotherapy. Read the article
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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