UT Health San Antonio

Chun-Liang Chen, Ph.D.

Professor

My research is to bridge basic biomedical science and personalized patient care. I am currently utilizing single-cell omics approaches to study heterogeneity in circulating tumor-related cells (e.g., circulating tumor cells (CTCs), hybrid tumor cells and immune cells), for prostate or breast cancer progression, detection, diagnosis, and therapy. Since 2015, I have served as the Deputy Director of CPRIT-funded BioAnalytics and Single-Cell Core (BASiC), a cutting-edge single-cell analysis facility. Development of cancer starts with rare single initiating and stem cells. Lately, we have found circulating hybrid tumor cells in the blood of advanced prostate cancer patients, that evade immune surveillance for metastasis. Integrative single-cell approaches reveal driver mutations, transcriptional signatures and proteomic and epigenetic modifications in tumor recurrence or metastasis. Recently, I joined the School of Nursing and serve as the Director of Biobehavior Laboratory, to direct omics research for underlying mechanisms of stress-, trauma-, aging-, metabolism-, addiction- and cancer-related diseases. Data showed that patients are highly heterogeneous in the response to medical treatments and interventions. The advanced single-cell omics will shed new light on the development of biomarkers for diseases and intervention response, so achieve the goals of personalized patient care.