Research Interests
Dr. Chung’s academic career incorporates the principles of research and education with clinical subspecialization, developing each pathway in a complementary manner. His clinical activities focus on diseases of the liver (primarily cancer and liver transplantation), pancreas and the biliary tree.
His research has been focused upon the modulation of the immune system in animal and human studies as it relates to transplantation and cancer. Specific research interests include development of new strategies for monitoring the immune status of transplant recipients and evaluation of novel tolerance inducing regimens in different animal models of transplantation.
He is part of a transplant immunology research team funded by a grant from Genome Canada examining the gene expression profile of immune cells from transplant recipients in order to develop methods of immunomonitoring to predict transplant graft rejection or accommodation. In parallel research studies, these principles of immunological evaluation have been applied to assessment of predicting outcomes of patients undergoing surgical resections for liver and pancreatic cancer.
Dr. Chung also has educational interests in surgical sciences, especially related to liver diseases and transplantation. He is involved in undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing medical education in these areas, has established a university-wide symposium for faculty and students in transplantation, and has organized several postgraduate surgical and research educational forums. Dr. Chung heads the the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Strategic Training Program in Transplantation. This program, involving many investigators and clinicians, is also supported by the VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation, The Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, and Fujisawa Canada.
He is a member a number of scholarly societies including the Canadian Association of General Surgeons, the BC Surgical Society, the American Society of Transplant Surgeons, the American Hepatopancreaticobiliary Association, the International Liver Transplantation Society, the Pacific Coast Surgical Association and the Society of University Surgeons.