Great baby shower with the Young Lab at UTHealth celebrating Andrea Hernandez Molina and her highly anticipated little scientist on the way!

UTHealth Houston SOD DS1 student Shawn Nguyen presenting his poster at the IADR / AADOCR meeting on the work he did in our lab comparing tumor immune microenvironment differences based on site of tumor implantation. Great job Shawn!

Excited to see this new collaborative work between the Hartgerink Lab and Yee Lab @tcellsrus testing out the use of MDPs as cytocompatible hydrogels for T cell expansion and antigen-specific killing! shorturl.at/kptD9

Congrats to our summer research undergrad student (now D1) Shawn Nguyen for winning 1st place in the UTHealth Houston School of Dentistry Annual Student Table Clinic Competition! He compared the tumor immune microenvironment at different implantation sites in a preclinical model of HNSCC. Way to go! 👏

Latest publication from the lab of C. Viet DDS, MD, PhD, FACS in collaboration with Young Lab at UTHealth using controlled release STING agonist as immunotherapy to treat both oral cancer progression and pain. With single cell RNASeq they define the immune cells responsible. mdpi.com/2227-9059/12/4…

The rankings for @NIDCR research funding are out and UTHealth Houston School of Dentistry was #1 in Texas and #10 nationally! Proud to be a part of this amazing institution and having the privilege to work with such a talented and motivated set of colleagues 💪 tinyurl.com/yt49py5s

Really excited that the US Patent for "STINGel", i.e. MDP hydrogel delivery of STING agonists, was finally granted today! A huge thank-you to my collaborator at Rice University Dr. Jeffrey Hartgerink and his (now graduated) PhD student Dr. David Leach for getting this through!

OMS Research Collaborative starting a new Clinical Innovation Series. Inaugural topic: maxillofacial imaging and AI. Series of short talks given by a great set of speakers, Q&A in-between + breakout rooms for each speaker at the end for you to go in-depth: tinyurl.com/4et8fu78

UT OMS Houston faculty joining in on the festivities as we celebrate our UTHealth Houston School of Dentistry graduates. A special moment for our Chairman Dr. Mark Wong being able to hood his daughter Lindsay, who is a member of the Class of 2024. Congratulations!! 🎉 #WeAreUTSD

Proud to see our MD Anderson-UTH Grad PhD student @SungaGema doing an incredible job presenting her work at the National Cancer Institute @NIDCR Immuno-Oncology Translational Network meeting at NIH discussing the tumor immune microenvironment in preclinical models of oral cancer! #weareutsd

As the '24 summer term comes to a close, wanted to thank Peyton Worley (BYU) and Arman Hassan (Rice) for joining the Young Lab at UTHealth and working on important immunotherapy projects modulating dendritic cells and MDSCs. We♥️ your enthusiasm + energy and wish you all the best!

There's lots of excitement surrounding immunotherapy to treat oral cancer and lesions at risk of becoming cancer (OPMDs). We discuss the limitations of systemic delivery and how localized, intratumoral approaches w/ biomaterials can address these: tinyurl.com/y9p8khut

Lots of great research presented at UTHealth Houston School of Dentistry Student Research Showcase today! Arman Hassan, Shawn Nguyen, Andrea Hernandez Molina, @SungaGema, Alejandra Cobos Perez, Caitlynn Barrows, Audra Boehm, Neeraja Dharmaraj, Nourhan Hussein repping Young Lab at UTHealth projects 👍🧪

We're excited to welcome Alejandra Cobos Perez to our lab as a new PhD graduate student! She will be co-mentored by Omid Veiseh and Simon Young as she develops biomaterial-encapsulated micro-cytokine factories to treat oral cancer, as a collab of Young Lab at UTHealth + Tabor Lab + #veisehlab

Andrea Hernandez Molina’s research in the Young Laboratory involves treatment for head and neck cancer. Hear more about her research and why she is thankful to work with such amazing scientists in her lab. Andrea is a PhD candidate in the Immunology Program. #WeAreGSBS

Congratulations to UTHealth Houston School of Dentistry DS2 student Shawn Nguyen for winning the AADOCR National Student Research Group (NSRG) Outstanding Regional Representative award and being selected to present his work on phenotyping the oral cancer immune microenvironment at this year's AADOCR SCADA competition! #weareutsd

Congrats Young Lab at UTHealth trainees for showcasing their work! Rice University undergrads Arman Hassan and Riya Pagilla discussed polarizing myeloid cells w/ STING agonists and new MDP hydrogels and MD Anderson-UTH Grad student Gema Sunga won 1st place at ACTS for her OSCC TME project! 💪

Congratulations to Andrea Hernandez Molina for winning an AACR Minority Scholar in Cancer Research (MICR) Travel Award to present her work in intratumoral cytokine therapy for head and neck cancer at the AACR Annual Meeting. Check out her poster on 4/28/25! #AACR25

Congrats to Caitlynn Barrows for successfully defending her PhD this week at MD Anderson-UTH Grad. Co-mentored by Simon Young and Cindy Farach-Carson, she's the 1st PhD student to graduate from Young Lab at UTHealth. We're so proud of her for her amazing work with human salivary gland stem/progenitor cells.

Big gracias to our speakers, engaged audience (~50 strong) and IADR & IADR Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Group for enabling this cross-disciplinary dialogue on how to push the frontiers of oral & craniofacial regeneration—onward to clinical impact! #TeamScience