Our Team

Qingfei Jiang, PhD

Principal Investigator

Dr. Qingfei (Fay) Jiang is a cancer stem cell biologist who studies the process of DNA and RNA editing in normal and cancer stem cells. She is interested in how these enzymes control cellular processes and gene regulation in specific cell types, and if we can utilize this understanding to better treat cancer patients. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Regenerative Medicine at the University of California, San Diego.

Dr. Jiang received her Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Southern California, where she worked on DNA damage repair and translation synthesis. She later joined University of California, San Diego in 2010 as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Catriona Jamieson’s lab. She conducted research on the role of inflammation-driven A-to-I RNA editing in leukemia stem cell generation. She has also received multiple prestigious awards, including NCI K22 Career Development Award, Hartwell Individual Biomedical Research Award, Curebound Discovery Award, Leukemia Research Fundation Award, and ASH Bridges Award.

Maria Rivera, MSc

Lab Manager

Maria Rivera (MSc) is a Cancer Research Associate and the lab manager in Dr. Jiang’s lab. Maria grew up in Ensenada, Mexico, she attended the Autonomous University of Baja California for a bachelor degree in Bioengineering, and the Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education at Ensenada for a Master of Science degree in Life Sciences with focus in Biomedicine and Bionanotechnology. Here, she worked with Karla Juarez and investigated the Synergistic antitumor effect of silver nanoparticles and antineoplastic drugs in breast cancer cell lines. A couple years later, Maria trained her cell culture and bioassay techniques at BioLegend, San Diego. In 2021, Maria joined Dr. Jiang’s lab to investigate cancer stem cell biology in pediatric cancer. She has expertise in 3D organoid culture and CRISPR-directed gene editing using patient samples.

Isabella Hoang, BS

Staff Research Assistant

Isabella Hoang is a Staff Researcher with a BS in Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience. She currently conducts in vitro and in vivo experiments as the vivarium lead. In her free time, Bella enjoys going to the beach, hiking, and reading.

Adena Pepich, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

Adena Pepich, Ph.D. is a pediatric oncology researcher. Her passion for improving lives, specifically those of children, led her down the path of neuroblastoma research. She started her journey on the topic during her PhD at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. There, she researched targeted therapies for mutated proteins through drug screening, synergistic drug combination, and further validation of targets. She identified enhanced drug pairs for novel combination treatments to reduce toxicity and improve efficacy in neuroblastoma. While also looking into tumor microenvironment, she aided in identification of changes in immune cell populations from bone marrow of metastatic patient samples to non-metastatic patient samples.

She continues her work here in Dr. Jiang’s lab at the University of California, San Diego, now looking into tumor microenvironment and progenitor cells, while exploring mechanistic link between RNA editing and RNA binding protein networks. Her current research focuses on the function of stress response pathways in RNA editing and uncovering the role of stress granules in disease progression of T-ALL.

Dan Plechnoy

Undergraduate Research Assistant