Huan Ting ONG

Research Fellow, Mechanobiology Institute, National University of Singapore

ong.ht@nus.edu.sg
Level 9 T-Lab
National University of Singapore
5A Engineering Drive 1
Singapore 117411

Huan Ting Ong

Research Fellow

Principal Investigator

Jennifer Young

Research Areas

Cell-cell & cell-matrix interactome; Tissue nanoenvironment; Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine

Qualifications

Forensic Science BForSc, Biomedical Science BSc(Hons), PhD

Biography

Background:

Huan Ting Ong completed her Bachelor’s degrees (BSc(Hons) and BForSc) at Murdoch University, Western Australia (2010-2015), and subsequently earned her PhD from the University of Western Australia (2017-2021). In Prof Rodney Dilley’s lab at the Ear Science Institute Australia (ESIA), her doctoral work investigated stem cells and their potential roles in wound healing of the human eardrum, specifically studying the cell-cell and cell-material interactions during wound healing. She then joined Dr Filippo Valente’s team at ESIA as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2021-2023) working on the development of biomaterials for use in chronic middle ear disease, investigated the pathophysiology of middle ear diseases, and established models for drug screening and discovery to improve eardrum repair.

Research interest:

Fascinated to better understand cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions spatially in diseased states, she joined Dr Jennifer Young’s Soft Nano-Biomaterials Lab at MBI in 2023, co-supervised by Dr Chii Jou (Joe) Chan, to interrogate the spatiotemporal regulation of matrix alterations in ovarian ageing dysfunction.

Research Interests

• Cell-cell & cell-matrix interactions
• Tissue ECM dynamics
• Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine
• Spatial omics

Technical Skills

• Cell culture (e.g. primary cell isolation, 3D cultures, co-cultures, tissue engineering, functional assays, in vitro disease modelling)
• Tissue biology (e.g. vibratome sectioning, cryosectioning, IHC, spatial transcriptomics)
• Molecular biology (e.g. RNA extraction, qRT-PCR, RNA sequencing, bioinformatics)

Selected Publications

  1. Ong HT*, Prêle CM, Dilley RJ. Using RNA-seq to identify suitable housekeeping genes for hypoxia studies in human adipose-derived stem cells. BMC Mol Cell Biol (2023) 24(1):16 *Corresponding author
  2. Hou R, Denisenko E, Ong HT, Ramilowski JA, Forrest ARR. Predicting cell-to-cell communication networks using NATMI. Nat Comm (2020) 11(1):5011
  4. Ong HT, Redmond SL, Marano RJ, Atlas MD, von Unge M, Aabel P, Dilley RJ. Paracrine activity from adipose-derived stem cells on in vitro wound healing in human tympanic membrane keratinocytes. Stem Cells Dev (2017) 26(6):405-418
  5. Liew LJ, Ong HT, Dilley RJ. Isolation and culture of adipose-derived stromal cells from subcutaneous fat. In: Rittié L (eds) Fibrosis. Methods in Molecular Biology (2017) 1627:193-203

Other Professional Involvements

Teaching:

AY24/25 S1: BN5302 Organs in a Dish: Organoid Bioengineering, NUS – Co-lecturer

AY23/24 S2: BN2201 Quantitative Physiology for Bioengineers, NUS -Guest lecturer

Professional Involvements:

MBI Postdoc Committee – Co-chair

AWTRS – Committee Member