At the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network
The Nguyen Lab studies how rare cancer cell populations drive tumour growth, metastatic spread, and treatment resistance. By combining cellular barcoding, single-cell genomics, and functional cancer models, we uncover the biological programs that let individual clones survive, adapt, and ultimately dominate a tumour — work that points toward therapies aimed at the source of relapse, not just its symptoms.
We track the cells cancer hides behind. You can help us find them by supporting our work.
Trista (Wing Yan) Chung joins us as a laboratory technician. She recently completed a MSc degree from York University in Biology and brings with her important skillsets in cell culture, molecular biology and in vivo work.
Jacob Novielli joins us as a MSc student after completing a BSc in Molecular Biology and Genetics at McMaster University. His project will focus on developing assays to study clonal growth and brain metastatic activity.
🧬 How chemotherapy reshapes tumors—one clone at a time
Using single‑cell barcoding and scRNA‑seq across breast cancer xenografts, we show that chemotherapy rapidly rewires the tumor cellular clonal landscape. Treatment selects for previously rare, resistant cell clones, with distinct responses across cell states and subtypes. Stress‑adaptive, slow‑cycling “persister” programs—marked by DUSP1 and KLF4—emerge in ER+/HER2− models, revealing new insights into chemotherapy tolerance.
🔬 Tracking resistance at single‑clone resolution changes how we think about treatment failure.
🚨 Check out our pre-print Kronheim S et al. bioRxiv 2026: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.04.02.716097
#CancerResearch #SingleCell #Chemotherapy #TumorEvolution
We’re thrilled to welcome Dr. Jiahui (Jacob) Wang as the newest member of our lab! Jacob joins us with a PhD in Physiology, Cell and Developmental Biology from the University of Alberta and brings valuable industry experience from his previous role as a Scientist.
Jacob’s position is supported by the Canada Leads 100 Challenge through the University Health Network (UHN)—an ambitious initiative aimed at recruiting 100 world-leading early-career scientists to UHN. We’re proud that Jacob is among this exceptional cohort.
In his cutting-edge project, Jacob will draw on his industry-honed expertise to develop novel biomolecular tools to better characterize breast cancer stem cells, pushing the boundaries of what we can discover and achieve in this space.
Congratulations to Dr. Long V. Nguyen for receiving a Project Grant in the 2025 competition for his project titled: “Functional properties and genetic dependencies of phenotypic plasticity in human triple-negative breast cancer“. He also received the CIHR Institute of Cancer Research’s Early Career Researcher Award in Cancer.
This work will be supported by the lab of Dr. Federico Gaiti (https://www.gaitilab.com/), who was a co-applicant on the grant.
Thank you to CIHR and the Institute of Cancer Research for this tremendous support for our work!
Congratulations to Sahil who received a Postdoctoral Fellowship Award from the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre to support his fellowship training and his project titled: “Unraveling molecular vulnerabilities in propagating TNBC clones via DNA barcoding and CRISPR functional genomics”.