Junghae Suh wins Outstanding New Investigator Award

Junghae Suh, a Rice associate professor of bioengineering, has won this year’s Outstanding New Investigator Award from the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy.

Junghae Suh

The award goes to members of the organization who conduct original research in basic science, technology development or clinical translation in the field of gene and cell therapy and are in the first decade of their “active independent” positions. The society’s mission is to “advance knowledge, awareness and education leading to the discovery and clinical application of gene and cell therapies to alleviate human disease.”

Suh’s Synthetic Virology Laboratory at Rice combines synthetic biology and virology to develop gene delivery technologies to treat human diseases, including cancer, and other disorders.

The lab has made strides toward treatment through “therapeutic viruses” that use light to activate and deliver their disease-fighting cargoes to cells; “tunable” viruses that work like safe deposit boxes for medicines; and ways to combine pieces of different adeno-associated viruses to create new, benign viruses that deliver DNA payloads to target cells.

Suh is one of four researchers to win the award this year. She has been invited to deliver a talk at the Outstanding New Investigator Symposium May 5 at the organization’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C.