Dr. Ting is a physician-scientist who has been focused on understanding the complex cancer transcriptome to understand fundamental cancer cell biology, identify therapeutic targets, and develop innovative diagnostic assays. He is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the Associate Clinical Director for Innovation at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center.

The Ting laboratory has developed innovative technologies to study the transcriptional landscape in cancer including single cell RNA-sequencing, single molecule RNA sequencing, and RNA in situ hybridization. The Ting laboratory has used these technologies to understand two areas in cancer biology.

The first area is the study of non-coding repeat RNAs in cancer, originally thought to be the “junk” in the genome. These repeat RNAs were found to be highly expressed in cancer compared to normal tissues and replicate through reverse transcriptional intermediates analogous to retroviruses as a mechanism to shape and repair the cancer genome.

The second area is understanding the mechanistic underpinnings of cancer metastasis and development of “liquid biopsy” biomarkers utilizing a microfluidic device to isolate circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and applying RNA analytical platforms to characterize these cells.

The combined work by the Ting lab has led to the founding of three early stage biotech companies in the pursuit of developing novel drugs and innovative biomarkers for cancer patients.

Dr. Ting received his SB in Chemical Engineering and Biology at MIT and MD from the Harvard-MIT program in Health Sciences and Technology. He performed research in the laboratory of Robert Langer ScD. developing nucleic acid delivery vehicles; as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute MD fellow in the laboratory of George Q. Daley, MD, PhD, working on hematopoietic stem cell development, and as a post-doctoral researcher with Daniel Haber, MD, PhD, on CTCs and non-coding repeat RNAs.