SeaBridge Fellow Changho Chun: 'Ultimately, this fellowship reflects my commitment to rigorous, human-relevant science that advances both therapeutic innovation and economic growth in Washington.'
Many graduate students applying to Ph.D. programs wait for weeks – or months – to hear whether they will be granted interviews. Changho Chun’s experience was exceptional. One might say his career has been exceptional.
Chun applied to the University of Washington in 2017, and within two weeks received an email from a professor wanting to discuss “potential collaboration” over dinner. That discussion a few days later lasted nearly five hours; after he and professor Deok-Ho Kim, Ph.D., left the restaurant in Seoul, South Korea, Chun was all but formally accepted to the UW Department of Bioengineering.
“It was evident he wanted to help me,” said Chun, and a post-doctoral fellow at SeaBridge, the translational research training program affiliated with the Seattle Hub for Synthetic Biology (Seattle Hub). “Plus, the UW has such a great research environment. I had applied to other Ph.D. programs, but I accepted the UW’s offer before even hearing back from the other schools.”
A “great research environment” has been a top priority for Chun since he was in middle school in his hometown of Daegu, a city of a two million-plus residents 150 miles southeast of Seoul. His father was a professor of Environmental Science at a nearby research institute, and Chun frequently visited his father’s lab.
“I did not know anything about his research, but I used to talk to his students,” he said. “I felt really good about what they were creating, and they really loved their work. They explained all the equipment, and gave me short, middle school-level science lectures.”
Listening attentively to lectures has been an important skill for Chun, who completed his Bachelor of Science Degree in Chemical and Biological Engineering in 2010 from Korea University, a private school in Seoul. He earned a Master’s Degree two years later in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University and subsequently returned to his home country to join Rokit Healthcare, Inc., a start-up firm specializing in regenerative medicine. There, Chun developed what he calls a “3-D tissue-scaffold printing platform” for tissue engineering research and participated in other R&D projects funded by the South Korean government.
“At that time, Rokit was a typical startup,” he said. “We had only six or seven employees. It was my first job experience and I was really interested in learning more about this cool new technology – 3-D printing.”
It was an “intense, but fun” environment, he said, adding that “my personality fits well with startup vibe.” That vibe has become a significant theme in Chun’s career.
In addition to working in the entrepreneurial environment of Seattle Hub, Chun is the Co-Founder & CEO of NuukBio Inc., a firm he launched in Seattle last December to commercialize a live, single-cell drug-response phenotyping platform. The work is built on TreDox, a platform that combines genetically-encoded molecular sensors with human iPSC-derived models to measure drug responses at single-cell resolution, a layer of information unavailable through conventional endpoint assays. This enables more accurate disease modeling and drug screening for therapeutic development.
Chun’s work caught the attention of the Washington Research Foundation, which has also supported the SeaBridge Fellowship program with a $10 million grant. Through the Foundation’s Phase 1 Technology Commercialization Grant, the University of Washington, with PI Andre Berndt, Ph.D., was awarded nearly $110,000 to help Chun further refine and validate TreDox as a commercially-ready scoring framework for predicting the efficacy of antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) candidates being developed for cancer treatments.
“The purpose of the technology commercialization grants is to bridge the gap between discovery research and commercial investment in novel technologies,” said Meher Antia, Ph.D., Director of the Foundation’s Grant Programs.
'Changho combines technical depth, translational ambition, and entrepreneurial maturity.'
Chun’s commitment to “novel technologies” is evident in his application to SeaBridge. He noted in his personal statement:
Washington's life-science ecosystem is uniquely positioned to support and benefit from the platform I want to build. The region already leads in human-relevant disease models, organoid engineering, and precision therapeutics, and a validated tissue-modeling suite will compound that momentum. By offering the platform openly, collaborating across institutions, and co-developing new assay tools with local investigators, I can help drive drug-development innovation across both academia and industry. The SeaBridge network also lets me give back, through mentoring junior scientists, organizing interdisciplinary workshops, and sharing best practices, so the fellowship's impact reaches beyond my lab to UW, Fred Hutch, the Allen Institute, Seattle Children's Research Institute, and others. Ultimately, this fellowship reflects my commitment to rigorous, human-relevant science that advances both therapeutic innovation and economic growth in Washington. SeaBridge will help me turn a proof-of-concept system into a platform for real-world impact, strengthening the region's translational pipeline and shortening the path from idea to application.
Chun is one of eight SeaBridge fellows incorporating Seattle Hub’s cell and genome programming technologies into their individual research projects in laboratories at the UW or Fred Hutch Cancer Center. Each fellow receives two years of financial support, as well as funding for a structured career development curriculum, mentorship training, and networking opportunities. SeaBridge seeks to diversify Seattle Hub technologies into new companies to commercialize novel therapeutics, diagnostics, or other cell-based technologies. The ultimate goal is to offer new clinical interventions to improve patients’ lives.
Every fellow has a mentor; for Chun that is Hina Iftikhar, the Senior Manager for Scientific Engineering.
"Changho combines technical depth, translational ambition, and entrepreneurial maturity,” Iftikhar said. “His leadership experience, proactive risk management, and clear communication style make him a likely high-impact fellow both scientifically and culturally."
'In most of my spare time I read books totally irrelevant to science.'
So, how does Chun balance his fellowship, post-doctoral work in the UW Medicine Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, and NuukBio research and fundraising responsibilities?
“With the demands of my work, along with my wife and seven-year-old son, I have no time for personal hobbies,” He said. “In most of my spare time I read books totally irrelevant to science.”
His current read is “Good to Great,” the landmark management book by Jim Collins. The title also seems to exemplify the future of Changho Chun.
