Sung Lab Staff

Youngho Kwon, PhD

Position: Associate Professor/Research
Email: kwony@uthscsa.edu

Youngho graduated from Seoul National University in S. Korea with B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees. He received his Ph.D degree in 2003 from Washington State University in Pullman, WA, in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Smerdon.  His research interests have been focused on understanding the molecular details of DNA repair mechanisms. His career as a biochemist and molecular biologist has continued under the guidance of Dr. Sung in his post-doctoral training period and as a research-track faculty in the Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry Department at Yale University. Youngho joined the Department of Biochemistry and Structural Biology at UTHSCSA as an associate professor/research in 2018 and has been investigating various aspects of the homology-directed DNA repair pathways and the link between DNA helicases and DNA replication machinery.

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James Daley, PhD

Position: Assistant Professor/Research
Email: daleyj@uthscsa.edu

Jim is originally from Wisconsin, where he obtained his B.A. in biology from Lawrence University. He did his Ph.D. with Thomas E. Wilson at the University of Michigan, where he worked on the nonhomologous end joining pathway of DNA repair. He spent a few years as a postdoc studying base excision repair in Montreal, Quebec before joining Dr. Sung’s lab in 2011. Since then, Jim has been working on elucidating the mechanisms of DNA end resection, and is currently initiating new projects addressing the mutagenic, cancer-associated microhomology-mediated end joining pathway. Outside the lab, Jim is enjoying discovering all that San Antonio has to offer, and has been especially impressed by Whataburger and those donuts that have hot dogs in the middle of them.

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Eloise Dray, PhD

Position: Assistant Professor/Research
Email: dray@uthscsa.edu

Eloïse received her Ph.D. from University Paris 11 in France, where she evidenced the first interaction between the breast cancer predisposition protein BRCA2 and the meiotic recombinase DMC1. She took a post-doctoral position in Dr. Sung’s laboratory at Yale University and became conversant with protein biochemistry. There, she investigated the link between breast cancer proteins (e.g. BRCA2, PALB2) and DNA repair pathways. During this time, she deciphered the function of several proteins, such as RAD51AP1, that are now considered essential to DNA repair mechanisms in humans.  After 6 years in Australia as a research fellow, including five as the lead of a small autonomous research group supported by the National Breast Cancer Foundation, the Princess Alexandra Foundation and the Cancer Council Queensland​, Eloise returned to the USA where she is now pursuing research at the UTHSCSA School of Medicine, in the department of Biochemistry and Structural Biology. She is investigating the role of protein phosphorylations in the maintenance of genomic integrity, and the role of chromatin remodellers in cancer avoidance.  Her interest in DNA repair pathways and its connection to breast cancer disease has lead to 24 publications in these fields of research.

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Yi Du, PhD

Position: Assistant Professor/Research
Email: duy1@uthscsa.edu

Yi received his Ph.D. and postdoctoral training in Dr. Mien-Chie Hung’s laboratory in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Oncology at the Graduate School of Biomedical Science, UT Health Science Center at Houston and UT MD Anderson Cancer Center. His research has focused on the development of mechanism-driven therapeutic strategies for cancer patients, uncovered the mechanism of how cancer cell signaling mediates PARP inhibitor resistance during cancer treatment, and led to development of a potential combinational strategy for PARP inhibitor resistance. He also investigated the role of EGFL6, an oncogenic and angiogenic protein, in promoting the aggressiveness of metastatic breast cancer by suppressing the immune response, and subsequently developed therapeutic approaches using a monoclonal antibody of EGFL6.  He joined Dr. Sung’s group at UTHSCSA in 2019, and as a joint research faculty, is currently working in Dr. Burma’s laboratory in the Department of Neurosurgery, where he will explore the mechanisms by which irradiation or other DNA damaging reagents induce cellular senescence in glioma, as well as the tumor microenvironment to link cancer recurrence or treatment resistance via cancer stem cells or immune suppression. His research goal is to develop novel therapeutic strategies for patients with glioma.

Jae-Hoon Ji, PhD

Position: Assistant Professor/Research
Email: jij@uthscsa.edu

Jae-Hoon received his Ph.D. in molecular biology from Dankook University in South Korea, where he worked on the upstream regulators and downstream targets of Polo-like kinase 1 during mitosis. He became a post-doctoral fellow in Dr. Sang Lee’s laboratory at UTHSCSA in 2009, where he focused on the DNA damage response (DDR) pathways, especially micro-homology-mediated end-joining (MMEJ), and also centromere core factors involved in DDR. He took a faculty position at Ajou University School of Medicine in South Korea in 2012, where he investigated the novel E3 ubiquitin ligases and their function in DDR. He also discovered the cross-talk between histone epigenetic modification and transcription-coupled homologous recombination (TC-HR) repair. He returned to UTHSCSA in 2019 as an assistant professor/research, where he is focusing on MMEJ vs. HR (Homologous Recombination); chromatin remodeling complexes and epigenetic codes in DDR; and E3 ligase’s function both in ATM (Ataxia Telangiectasia Mutated) (ATM) vs. PARPs (poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase) and in alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT).

Stephen Holloway, PhD

Position: Laboratory Manager
Email: holloways@uthscsa.edu

Stephen obtained a bachelor’s in biochemistry from the University of Manchester and remained at the same university to obtain a doctorate, also in biochemistry, studying the tubulin genes of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. He continued his studies on the parasite as a post-doctoral fellow at Dartmouth Medical School, investigating the chaperone genes as well as drug resistance, but subsequently transitioned to chloroplast RNA processing in the unicellular alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii during a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin. A further, gradual, transition to laboratory management occurred during this second fellowship, and this became a permanent career after moving to the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, where he worked on a number of projects ranging from ALS to schistosomiasis. He joined Dr. Sung’s laboratory in October of 2018 and oversaw the lab’s transition from Yale to UTHSCSA.  He has a keen interest in natural history (particularly dragonflies), macro photography, South African succulents, history (especially that of the eighteenth and nineteenth century botanical explorers), woodworking, and hiking the great Texas trails.

Nicolas Paquet, PhD

Position: Research Scientist/Senior
Email: paquet@uthscsa.edu

Nicolas obtained a M.Sc. in evolution and botany and, in 2006, a Ph.D. in plant physiology from the Paris XI University, France, before pursuing his post-doctoral training in biochemistry and DNA repair in the Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University, USA. Following his relocation to Australia in 2012, Nicolas continued his research on single-strand DNA-binding proteins and their role in DNA repair and cancer development. Underpinning his current role, Nicolas brings a strong and comprehensive career in protein science and protein production, Nicolas also has expertise across molecular biology, and biophysics – SPR, MALS, CD Spectrophotometry. Until 2018, Nicolas was head of the Downstream Process Department for one of the leading Australian contract manufacturing organisations. There he established, led, and managed a team of scientists focused on downstream process activities (separation, filtration, chromatography), from early process development to large scale cGMP production of active pharmaceutical ingredients extracted from microorganisms for pre-clinical studies and clinical trials (Phase 1, 2 and 3).

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Hardeep Kaur, PhD

Position: Research Scientist
Email: kaurh@uthscsa.edu

Hardeep was born in New Delhi, India, and studied both Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and IMTECH, Chandigarh.  She worked at the Institute of Microbial Technology before becoming a post-doctoral researcher at the National Cancer Institute.  She joined Dr. Sung’s lab in September of 2018, and moved with the Sung lab to UTHSCSA in February of 2019.

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Yashpal Rawal, PhD

Position: Research Scientist
Email: rawal@uthscsa.edu

Yashpal graduated from the University of Rajasthan, India, in 2005 with a master’s in biotechnology and obtained his Ph.D. from Institute of Microbial Technology in Chandigarh, India.  He did post-doctoral research at The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), where he worked on the chromatin remodelers SWI/SNF and RSC and their versatile regulation of different stages of transcription initiation.  He joined Dr. Sung’s lab in September of 2018, and moved with the Sung lab to UTHSCSA in February of 2019.

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Bárbara de la Peña Avalos, PhD

Position: Postdoctoral Fellow
Email: delapenaaval@uthscsa.edu

Bárbara earned her Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry and microbiology from Universidad del Valle, Guatemala in 2009 and Master of Science degree in molecular and cell/cellular biology in 2014 under the guidance of Dr. Manuel Navarro, working on the characterization of ERAS, a putative novel human oncogene, in skin and breast at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain. In 2015, she started her Ph.D. work in Dr. Dray’s laboratory, at the Translational Research Institute/Queensland University of Technology, in Brisbane, Australia. There, she studied the role of the protein phosphatase EYA4 in preventing genomic instability and breast cancer development, with the support of the Princess Alexandra Research Foundation. She completed her Ph.D. in 2018 and joined Dr. Sung’s Laboratory in January 2019, where she is focusing her research efforts on studying new breast cancer genes to establish their role in DNA damage repair, maintenance of genomic stability, and carcinogenesis. Outside the lab, Barbara enjoys outdoor activities: hiking, playing soccer, and kickboxing.

Arijit Dutta, PhD

Position: Postdoctoral Fellow
Email: duttaa1@uthscsa.edu

Arijit graduated from University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, TX with a Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology. In his doctoral research with Sankar Mitra, his studies revealed the molecular mechanisms of error-prone DNA repair pathway, microhomology mediated end joining (MMEJ). Arijit joined Dr. Sung’s Lab in early 2017 at Yale University and has been working on understanding the mechanisms of R-loop resolution and the role of RNA in DNA double strand break repair in human cells. With a comprehensive skillset encompassing protein purification, biochemical reconstitution assays, cell-based assays and high-resolution microscopy, Arijit aims to answer some underlying biomolecular mechanisms associated with cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. Arijit is from Durgapur, a city in West Bengal, India. He loves traveling, painting and classical music.

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Yuxin Huang

Position: Postdoctoral Fellow
Email: huangy9@uthscsa.edu

Yuxin obtained her Ph.D. in medical biochemistry and molecular biology from Peking University Health Science Center, focusing on the biochemical and structural characterization of PDZ domain-containing scaffold proteins INAD/INADL and their binding partners. She joined the Sung lab in 2019, where she will work on Fanconi anemia and homologous recombination pathways. Apart from work, she loves jogging and music.

Ajinkya Kawale, PhD

Position: Postdoctoral Fellow
Email: kawale@uthscsa.edu

Ajinkya completed his B.Tech. in Biotechnology from Mumbai, India before moving to the United States to attend graduate school. He received a Masters in Molecular Biology and Genetics in 2015 and then went on to get a Ph.D. in Pharmacology and Toxicology working with Dr. Lawrence Povirk at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he investigated the mechanisms by which DNA double-strand breaks with blocked ends are processed via the Non-Homologous End Joining (NHEJ) repair pathway. He is interested in understanding how cells make a choice between the different DSB repair pathways and is currently working on deciphering the mechanisms by which the newly identified Shieldin complex inhibits DNA end resection and thereby regulates DSB repair pathway choice. Ajinkya is an ardent sports enthusiast and loves playing cricket, badminton, and soccer. He is currently supported by a CPRIT Postdoctoral Fellowship.

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Cody Rogers, PhD

Position: Postdoctoral Fellow
Email: rogersc4@uthscsa.edu

Cody grew up in Michigan where he obtained a B.S. in biomedical sciences from Grand Valley State University. He received a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Indiana University in Matt Bochman’s lab where he worked on the role of RecQ4 helicases in maintaining genome integrity, with emphasis on the role of the yeast RecQ4 helicase in DNA inter-strand crosslink repair. Cody joined Dr. Sung’s group in 2019 as a postdoctoral fellow to investigate the roles of BRCA and BRCA-associated proteins in homology directed DNA repair. Outside of the lab, Cody can usually be found sampling the local breweries.

Sameer Salunkhe, PhD

Position: Postdoctoral Fellow
Email: salunkhe@uthscsa.edu

Sameer obtained his Ph.D. degree from ACTREC Navi Mumbai India in 2018. In his Ph.D. he worked on the cell biology of drug-resistant leukemia cells and identified the contribution of DNA repair mechanisms on the acquisition of acquired drug resistance. He joined Dr. Sung’s lab in October 2018 at Yale university and moved to University Health Science Center at San Antonio. His broad research interest lies in exploring the regulation of DNA double-strand break repair pathway of choice. He is involved in interrogating the multiple facets of DNA end resection with a major focus on 53BP1-RIF1 and BRCA1-BARD1 antagonism.

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Francisco Neal

Position: Graduate Student
Email: nealf@livemail.uthscsa.edu

Francisco earned his B.A. from Austin College with a major in molecular biology and a minor in music. While at Austin College, he studied the role of calcium and galactose-responsive transcription factors in modulating the expression of glycogen phosphorylase. During the summers of 2015 and 2016, Francisco worked at UT Southwestern as part of the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship. His work at UT Southwestern focused on determining the effects of cyclin-dependent kinase inhibition on DNA double-strand break repair in cancer cells. After completing his undergraduate studies, Francisco started in the Medical Scientist Training Program at UT Health San Antonio. Francisco’s Ph.D. project aims to further elucidate the DNA binding activity of BRCA2 and its role in mediating homology-directed DNA repair (HDR). Additional work will seek to uncover the role of the RAD51 paralogs in orchestrating HDR.

Eva Galvan

Position: Intern
Email: galvane@uthscsa.edu

Eva Galvan, M.D. is currently a fifth-year radiation oncology resident at the UT Health MD Anderson Mays Cancer Center. Originally from Houston, she attended Yale University and double-majored in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology and in history of science and medicine. For medical school, she returned to Texas to attend the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. She then decided to stay in town for a general surgery intern year and residency training in radiation oncology. She has conducted both clinical and basic lab research over the last 12+ years. She has published clinical research in the fields of both radiology and radiation oncology. In the lab, through college and medical school, she participated in DNA methylation research and immunology/cytokine research. Currently, she is working in the Dr. Sung’s lab investigating novel tumor suppressors and oncogenes and characterizing their function in DNA damage repair.

John Cavaretta

Position: Research Associate
Email: cavaretta@uthscsa.edu

John was born and raised in Buffalo, New York. He obtained his B.S. in neuroscience from the University of Pittsburgh before moving to Portland, Oregon, where he worked in Dr. Judy Cameron’s lab at the Oregon National Primate Research Center performing observational studies on the largest intact troop of Japanese Macaques in the U.S.  John returned to Pittsburgh after marrying his wife, Melissa, and worked initially in Dr. German Barrioneuvo’s lab studying learning and memory in CA3 hippocampal neurons before moving to Dr. Janet Lee’s lab at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where he focused on performing radio-ligand assays and morphometric analysis of emphysema induced tissue damage in the lungs.  In 2011, John moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign while his wife attended veterinary school and worked in Dr. Hee Jung Chung’s lab, studying the mechanisms underlying targeted axonal surface expression of voltage-gated potassium channels related to Epilepsy. After his wife finished veterinary school, they moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico, where John joined Dr. Amanda Ashley’s lab at N.M.S.U. and worked on the mechanisms underlying DNA damage repair in triple negative breast cancer.  He joined Dr. Sung’s lab in August of 2019.  John enjoys spending time with his family, playing tennis, and is a hobbyist machinist.

Zhuoling He

Position: Research Technician−Associate
Email: hez@uthscsa.edu

Zhuoling graduated recently with a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and has an interest in double-stranded DNA repair pathways. She joined Dr. Sung’s laboratory as a research technician in August of 2019 and is aiming to get a Ph.D. degree in the future.