RhoGAM Boy
Hi, I’m Suyeong. I owe my life to an antibody. As the second child of an Rh(D)-negative mother, I would not have been born safely without RhoGAM, an antibody therapy.
That story led me to pharmacy, and then to immunology. I completed my Pharm.D. at Seoul National University and an M.S. in immunology at the same school, and I am now a first-year PhD student in immunology at UT Southwestern.
The name of this blog, ‘GAMRho’, is the name of a therapy I hope to create one day. Just as RhoGAM saved me, I want to help protect lives like mine by developing ‘GAMRho’. This blog will follow my journey toward that therapy, along with my many other interests.
Research interests
Some antibodies save lives, while others attack our own bodies. I want to study where pathogenic autoantibodies, and the immunological origins that produce them, come from, through the lens of genetics.
- Inherited? Which genetic factors contribute to the formation of autoreactive antibodies?
- Selected? How are the T cells that contribute to autoreactive antibodies selected?
- Expanded? How does the makeup of autoreactive antibodies change as we age?
Education & Experience
- 2026 – : UT Southwestern Medical Center · Ph.D. Program in Basic Biomedical Sciences
- 2024 – 2025 : KATUSA · Sergeant, 3-2 GSAB, 2nd Infantry Division (Battalion Senior KATUSA)
- 2024 – 2025 : Seoul National University College of Medicine, Functional Genomics Lab · Research Assistant (Murim Choi)
- 2022 – 2024 : Seoul National University College of Pharmacy · M.S., T Cell Development Lab (You Jeong Lee)
- 2018 – 2022 : Seoul National University College of Pharmacy · Pharm.D., licensed pharmacist in Korea
Selected publication
Lee M*, Park S*, Choi J, Bae SY, Ryu HS, Kim M, Kwak JG, Lee YJ. Human MAIT cells undergo clonal selection and expansion during thymic maturation and aging. Experimental & Molecular Medicine 57, 1789–1801 (2025). *Co-first authors
CV
My full CV is available as a PDF. If you’d like to talk, feel free to reach out at the email address listed on my CV.