Hang Chen

Education

  • Shandong First Medical University, Bachelor of Medicine

Brief Biography

I decided to pursue life science owing to my childhood wishes of saving lives. Upon entering the medical school, I was fully immersed in the joy of learning new medical knowledge from physiology, pathology, oncology to genetics, biochemistry and immunology. I graduated last summer from Shandong First Medical University in China. I received 5 years of medical training through learning courses, doing clinical internships, and also had a total of around 1 year of bench work training. During college, I was particularly interested in oncology and immunology, because I think these are two of the most complicated subjects, and there are so many unknowns in cancer and immunology research. During my several internships in hospitals, I witnessed the hopelessness of cancer patients, so I made up my mind to devote myself to cancer research in the future. My life goal is to find cures to treat cancer and help those hopeless people.

My favorite direction is tumor immunology. Because during my internships at hospitals, I learned about immunotherapy. This amazing treatment could boost the body’s self-defending capacity and represent the most promising therapy to cure cancer. I had worked with physicians to treat late stage lung cancer patients with immune checkpoint inhibitors, and I witnessed the astonishing effects of this type of treatment in some patients. I really want to continue research in this area in order to save more cancer patients.

After my PhD graduation, I plan to do further post-doctoral training in human cancer immunology and clinical immunotherapy. After that training, I wish I can start my own research group in a university to combine preclinical and clinical models to treat cancer metastasis using the next generation of immunotherapy. I believe that boosting the human body’s own immunity is the most promising treatment to cure cancer.