Children's Cancer Institute Australia
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Dr Caitlin Ung is an early career post-doctoral researcher at the Children’s Cancer Institute Australia (CCIA). She is a cancer biologist with a research focus on paediatric brain tumours, working primarily on Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG). Caitlin completed a Science degree with Class I Honours through the University of Sydney in 2016. Her honours research project was undertaken at the Centenary Institute in Australia, in the Immune Imaging Laboratory, and focused on investigating novel compounds to target invadopodia to inhibit melanoma invasion. Following this she took on a research assistant position in 2017 at CCIA in the Brain tumour research group. She subsequently completed a PhD in the same laboratory at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in September 2023, focusing on investigating the effect of DIPG on blood-brain barrier permeability and evaluating strategies to overcome it. Her project involved using orthotopic in vivo models, confocal microscopy and single-cell RNA sequencing to determine alterations in the brain vasculature in response to DIPG growth and to investigate novel compounds to increase drug penetration into the brainstem. Her PhD thesis has been nominated for the UNSW Dean's award for outstanding theses. Caitlin has publications in Nature communications, Theranostics, Cell Reports, Cancers, and EMBO molecular medicine. She has presented at various national and international oncology conferences, including ISPNO, New South Wales Cancer conference, Kid's Cancer Alliance childhood cancer symposium, as well as being awarded first prize for her oral presentation at EMBL Australia Postgraduate symposium in 2021.
