News — Chung Lab

Chung lab postdoc honored with 2025 Koch Institute Image Award

One of the postdoctoral researchers from the Chung Lab, Dr. Lorenzo Ochoa, has been named a recipient of the 2025 Koch Institute Image Award; the award recognizes exceptional scientific images that are visually striking while conveying significant insights into biomedical research. The winning image showcases cutting-edge advancements in high-resolution brain mapping, a core focus of the lab’s research. This achievement highlights the lab’s commitment to developing innovative imaging techniques that deepen our understanding of brain structure and function. The award celebrates both the aesthetic and scientific impact of their work, reinforcing the importance of visualizing complex biological systems to drive discovery.



This image represents a 3D reconstruction of the brain, highlighting the extensive projections of the locus coeruleus (LC), also known as the adrenaline center, to the hippocampus and other brain regions. The Chung lab and collaborators employed a multimodal approach combining engineered AAVDJ-EF1α-fDIO-EGFP viral constructs, SHIELD tissue transformation, optical clearing, and light-sheet microscopy to achieve high-resolution mapping of LC projections. Machine learning algorithms further enabled the segmentation and long-range tracing of neuronal pathways. This work advances our understanding of LC connectivity, a critical factor in early Alzheimer’s disease pathology and aging-related neurodegeneration.

Share

Chung Lab Featured in MIT News: Breakthrough Technologies for Protein Labeling of Intact Tissues

We are excited to share that our lab’s latest innovations have been featured in MIT News! The article showcases the new CuRVE and eFLASH technologies, which enable ultrafast and uniform protein labeling across tens of millions of densely packed individual cells in fully intact 3D tissues with unprecedented precision and scalability. This breakthrough addresses critical challenges in studying complex biological systems, such as brain tissue and organoids, where dense cellular environments often hinder detailed protein analysis. By integrating advanced molecular engineering, high-resolution imaging, and computational analysis, our approach allows for more accurate characterization of protein distributions in situ. This innovation significantly improves the speed and accuracy of protein visualization, unlocking new possibilities for biological and neuroscience research.

Read the full article on MIT News: MIT method enables ultrafast protein labeling of tens of millions of densely packed cells
Publication in Nature Biotechnology: View the study
Watch the technology in action:

This advancement represents a major step forward in whole-organ protein imaging and provides researchers with a more reliable way to study cellular protein expression in complex biological systems. We look forward to seeing how these technologies will be applied to future discoveries!
For more details, visit MIT News.



Share

Science Paper Published

We are thrilled to announce that Juhyuk Park’s paper, "Integrated platform for multiscale molecular imaging and phenotyping of the human brain” has been published in Science Magazine.

Park, Wang, Guan et al. Science 384, eadh9979 (2024)

Link: https://lnkd.in/dyhbTEty

To develop new treatments or innovative drugs for intractable/incurable diseases, it is crucial to gain deeper understandings of complex human biological systems at various scales. However, the large size and fragile properties of human organs present numerous challenges, causing most research to rely on small, sectioned tissue samples.

In our paper, we present a biotechnology platform for 3D human brain mapping that addresses these challenges by integrating three innovations in Materials Science (mELAST), Mechanical Engineering (MEGAtome), and Computer Science (UNSLICE).

Our advanced polymeric network (mELAST) transforms biological tissues into unique biomaterials that are transparent, elastic, size-adjustable, and chemically and thermally resistant, while preserving endogenous biomolecules. This tissue processing method has enabled us to image various biomolecules at multiple scales from the same, thick, large-scale human brain tissues, providing valuable data on Alzheimer's disease.

We believe this platform can be widely applied to all human organs, laying the foundation for creating a cellular and subcellular level 3D map of the entire human body.

This work was supervised by Prof. Kwanghun Chung at MIT and co-led by me, Dr. Ji Wang, and Dr. Webster Guan. Also it includes other co-authors: Lars Gjesteby, Dylan Pollack, Lee Kamentsky, Nicholas Evans, Jeff Stirman, Xinyi Gu, Victor Chuanxi Zhao, Slayton Marx, Minyoung Evelyn Kim, Seo Woo Choi, Michael Snyder, David Chavez, Clover Su, Yuxuan Tian, Chang Sin Park, Qiangge Zhang, Dae Hee Yun, Mira M, Guoping Feng, X. William Yang, C. Dirk Keene, Patrick Hof, Satrajit Ghosh, Matthew P. Frosch, and Laura J. Brattain.

Share