Suhn Kyong Rhie, PhD

Dr. Rhie received her B.S. in Biochemistry, magna cum laude from the University of California, Los Angeles. She earned her Ph.D. degree in Genetic, Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Southern California in 2013. She completed her postdoctoral training in the laboratories of Dr. Peter Laird and Dr. Peggy Farnham. Dr. Rhie participated in Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) in different cancer types, unraveling mechanisms that explain how genetic variants affect disease risks. Dr. Rhie characterized heterogeneous tumor tissues as a leader of DNA methylation analysis for The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) Consortium and discovered how genetic alterations such as somatic mutations, fusions, copy number variations are associated with epigenetic changes in cancer. She has also led epigenomic data analysis to investigate how transcription factors act at regulatory elements in a 3D nucleome structure in cancer and psychiatric diseases as part of the ENCODE and PsychENCODE Consortia.
Her current research interests are to characterize key transcription factor and understand roles of regulatory elements activated in different types of cancers and neurodevelopmental diseases. By using both molecular biology and bioinformatics to address how genes are regulated in 3D nucleome structure (e.g. ChIP-seq, RNA-seq, whole genome sequencing, whole genome bisulfite sequencing, NOMe-seq, DNA methylation, Hi-C, CRISPR/Cas9, dCas9-ED systems), her lab is discovering new molecular mechanisms of human diseases that can aid in the development of therapeutics to enhance quality of life for patients.

• Ethel Terry McCoy Award for Excellence in Chemistry and Biochemistry, 2007
• Women for Change, 2007
• NCI Career Development Award, 2018
   – 2021
• NCI EIAP Scholar, 2022
• NCCC Cancer Equity Scholar, 2023

• University of California, Los Angeles — B.S. — 06/2007 — Biochemistry
• University of Southern California — Ph.D. — 05/2013 — Genetic, Molecular and Cellular Biology

• Epigenetic changes and clinicopathological characterization of prostate cancer from patients of African ancestry
  DoD · Sep 30, 2021 – Sep 29, 2025 · Role: Principal Investigator
• Mapping regulatory elements and chromatin structures in prostate tumor subtypes at single nucleosome resolution
  NIH · R21CA264637 · Sep 1, 2021 – Aug 31, 2023 · Role: Principal Investigator
• Reversing molecular cancer phenotypes by targeting epigenetic alterations in prostate cancer
  NIH · R21CA260082 · May 1, 2021 – Apr 30, 2023 · Role: Principal Investigator
• Identifying epigenetic states of TADs and targeting using epigenome editing
  NIH · R21HG011506 · Mar 15, 2021 – Feb 28, 2025 · Role: Principal Investigator
• Identification and Clinical Validation of Key Transcription Factor Isoforms Linked to Breast and Prostate Cancer Subgroups using Epigenetic Traits
  NIH · K01CA229995 · Sep 1, 2018 – Aug 31, 2021 · Role: Principal Investigator

• Epigenetics, Transcription Factors, Regulatory Elements, DNA methylation, 3D maps, Bioinformatics

• Farnham, Peggy
• Haiman, Christopher
• Liang, Gangning
• An, Woojin
• Peters, Anne
• Wiemels, Joseph