Kitty Cheung Email & Phone Number

San Diego, CA, US

Greater San Diego Area

Current project: Examining the role of TLR2 in renal ischaemic injury

La Jolla, California

• Current project: Exploring the impact of obesity induced inflammation on intestinal gamma-delta T cell function
• Analysis of activation and exhaustion markers on intraepithelial lymphocytes (IELs) isolated from obese and lean mice with flow cytometry.
• Performing ex-vivo cytokine production analysis
• Experience with swiss roll preparations of intestine for immunofluorescent and histological analysis.
• Introduced the dextran-sulfate sodium colitis induction model to study intestinal injury in the lab
• Conducted in-vitro stimulation analysis of IELs to quantify cytokine and growth factor production.

Greater San Diego Area

• Ph.D. Dissertation: “Memory-like CD8+ T cells generated during homeostatic proliferation defer to antigen-experienced memory cells”
• Investigated how ‘memory-like’ CD8+ T cells generated during lymphopenia-induced homeostatic proliferation (HP-memory) competed for limited resources within the memory T cell compartment.
• Compared the immune responses of HP-memory cells in the presence of antigen-experienced ‘true-memory’ cells.
• Determined that in the absence of competition, CD8+ HP-memory T cells generated robust responses upon infection and produced secondary memory comparable to true-memory cells.
• Demonstrated that in the presence of competition, HP-memory cells contributed less to the effector population, contracted earlier and formed fewer secondary memory cells than true-memory cells, despite earlier.
• Through confocal microscopy, we illustrated that HP- and true-memory cells exhibited distinct localization within the spleen during the immune response.

South San Francisco, CA

• Project: Evaluating the effect of small molecule inhibitors on various oncology models (in-vitro/in-vivo)
• Proficient with rodent handling including subcutaneous injections, transponder implantation, tumor implantation, and thoracic puncture.
• Routinely administered drug compounds via oral gavage, intraperitoneal, and intravenous injections.
• Performed mammalian tissue culture of tumor cells for implantation and immunofluorescent analysis.
• Cell cycle analysis
• Immunolfluorescent staining

San Francisco Bay Area

• Project: Identifying the role of the homeobox genes during pathologically induced angiogenesis, specifically the role of HoxA5 in the formation of hemangiomas.
• Cloning, transfection, and maintenance of stable cell lines.
• Basic molecular biology techniques including Western blotting, luciferase and beta galactocidase reporter assays.
• Chick Chorioallantoic Membrane (CAM) angiogenesis assay.

Phd, Biology-Immunology

Ba, Molecular Cell Biology

Activities and Societies: Cal Marching Band