Yea Eun Kang, MD, PhD is a physician scientist and the Principal Investigator of the research group.  She did her MD/PhD in the Chungnam National University in South Korea, then completed residencies in Medicine and clinical fellowship in Chungnam National University Hospitals. She joined the visitor scientist in Dr. Jeong Ho Lee's lab (KAIST) in 2018 then joined the faculty in 2020 in Chungnam National University. Now, she is visiting professor in Jun Park's lab (UCLA, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering) to learn to accurate measurements for metabolites. Dr. Kang’s clinical and research interests are related to tumor metabolism from refractory solid cancers, tumorigenesis associated with metabolic stress, cancer cachexia and novel therapies for advanced cancer.  

Seong Eun Lee, PhD is a Research Professor, the Project Scientist in the lab. She graduated from Chungnam National University where she majored in Biology and Medical Science. She explored the importance of YAP involved in thyroid cancer (PMID: 23857250) and the impact of GDF15 required for IL-13-induced improvement glucose tolerance (PMID: 28874416) in gruaduated course. Now, she is exploring the cause of refractory solid tumor through computational analysis of bulk RNA sequencing and single cell RNA sequencing (2023.AACR. abstract 6069, 2022. BioBix. Mitochondrial SHMT2 is a crucial therapeutic target in dedifferentiated thyroid cancer ). Seong Eun hopes to be able to continue pursing research throughout her career. 

Jiyeon is a gruduate student at Chungnam National University in the MS program. She joined our lab from 2024. She graduated from Dong-Eui University with a degree in Biomedical Engineering and Biotechnology in 2024. She studied the effects of microbiota  in fish at Dong-Eui University. 

Na Rae Choi is a Research Associate in th lab. She graduated from Daejeon Institute of Science and Technology where she majored in medical laboratory science. She finished the course of Clinical Research Coordinator and she is also proficient in several in vitro and in vivo experiments. Now, she is making genetic animal models of advanced thyroid cancer and investigated cancer metabolism based on the metabolites from human pancreatic cancer.