Biologist at Scripps, PhD at Stanford. Dynamics of genomes and cells.
Joined February 2015
- Tweets 404
- Following 156
- Followers 1,209
- Likes 4,048
62 Photos and videos
Pinned Tweet
19 Nov 2025
Our paper is out in @Nature! Oncogenes are often copy-number amplified on extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) in cancer, but how is ecDNA inherited by dividing cells? Here we identified elements within ecDNA that promote its retention in dividing cells. 1/11
nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
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King L Hung retweeted
Apr 17
Congrats to postdoctoral fellow King Hung (@kinglhung) on being named a Damon Runyon Fellow, supporting research on how cells communicate to coordinate tissue behavior, a process disrupted in cancer. Using flatworms, he studies how physical and biochemical signals guide regeneration through live-cell tracking. More: ow.ly/qJil50YLhPY
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Apr 14
Happy to receive funding from Damon Runyon Fellowship / HHMI for the next 4 years! We're working on some fundamental questions in tissue biology and I'm excited to share more soon. Grateful to @ardemp for the mentorship!
damonrunyon.org/news/damon-r…
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King L Hung retweeted
So excited to see our work profiling the tumor microenvironment in triple negative breast cancer out @NatureCancer! Please give it a read, super proud of this one :)
For a full description of what we found, see below for a detailed tweetorial. nature.com/articles/s43018-0…
29 Jan 2025
I’m super excited to share what I’ve been working on for the last (many) years: a spatial genomic transcriptomic characterization of how the breast cancer microenvironment evolves through immunotherapy! (1/x) biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
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King L Hung retweeted
Jan 12
Most people eat small (~1-2% body weight) and frequent (2-3x/day) meals. But Burmese pythons 🐍🐍 can fast for >1 yr and eat 100% of their weight in a single meal. What happens in snakes after eating? What lessons they can teach us about human physiology? biorxiv.org/content/10.64898…
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King L Hung retweeted
Jan 7
Now online! EcDNA-borne structural variants drive oncogenic fusion transcript amplification dlvr.it/TQClG0
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King L Hung retweeted
4 Dec 2025
Stanford Medicine researchers found that tiny cancer-linked DNA circles “hitchhike” on chromosomes to spread during cell division. Blocking this attachment may offer a new avenue for future cancer therapies.
med.stanford.edu/news/all-ne…
ALT Stanford Medicine: Cancer-promoting DNA circles hitchhike on chromosomes to spread to daughter cells
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4 Dec 2025
Very nice news coverage on my scientific journey by Christie Wilcox in @ScienceMagazine and #ScienceAdviser: science.org/content/article/…
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3 Dec 2025
This was probably one of my crazier ideas early in grad school and was such a fun project to work on. Check out this awesome short video from @JuliaBauman2 highlighting this work!
3 Dec 2025
ecDNA biology is one of those weird, fascinating corners of bio that hook me every time there's a new result. So I loved reading about this one from @HowardYChang & Paul Mischel's labs in @Nature.
Very interesting implications for design of non-diluting, non-integrating gene therapy vectors!
Great work Venkat & @kinglhung 😀
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King L Hung retweeted
19 Nov 2025
My lab is recruiting postdoc candidates interested in CRISPR synthetic biology and functional genomics approaches to study and engineer tissue injury responses! hsiunglab.org
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King L Hung retweeted
20 Nov 2025
Tremendous work by @kinglhung and @HowardYChang ! This recent discovery answers the most critical question on ecDNA maintenance! @Nature Are you a non-scientist? No worries! Check this non-scientist-friendly summary! rdcu.be/eQMvM
Nature research paper: Genetic elements promote retention of extrachromosomal DNA in cancer cells
go.nature.com/4pkUpDE
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20 Nov 2025
Nice feature article from @_eunhee_yi_ and Noah Dusseau about our work: nature.com/articles/d41586-0…
19 Nov 2025
Our paper is out in @Nature! Oncogenes are often copy-number amplified on extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) in cancer, but how is ecDNA inherited by dividing cells? Here we identified elements within ecDNA that promote its retention in dividing cells. 1/11
nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
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Nature research paper: Genetic elements promote retention of extrachromosomal DNA in cancer cells
go.nature.com/4pkUpDE
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19 Nov 2025
Our paper is out in @Nature! Oncogenes are often copy-number amplified on extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) in cancer, but how is ecDNA inherited by dividing cells? Here we identified elements within ecDNA that promote its retention in dividing cells. 1/11
nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
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19 Nov 2025
Overall, we propose that ecDNA is not only selected in cancer because of oncogenes, it is also actively retained because of retention elements, allowing it to persist in a growing cancer cell population. 10/11
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19 Nov 2025
It was great mentoring and working with Venkat Sankar on this project. Also great working with @HowardYChang, Paul Mischel, Aditi Gnanasekar, Ivy Wong, and other collaborators on this project. 11/11
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