Who is ... Dr. Phuong-Hien Nguyen?

Dr. Phuong-Hien Nguyen

“What fascinates me most about biomedical research is the process of uncovering how complex systems organize, adapt, and evolve together; how countless molecular and cellular interactions can give rise to emergent behavior in health and disease. I am driven by the challenge of connecting mechanistic insights to broader biological principles and by the belief that mechanistic research holds the power to drive meaningful clinical advancement.” 

Education & Scientific Career

Dr. Phuong-Hien Nguyen studied Biology at Heidelberg University, earning her Diplom in 2009 with a thesis at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ). She completed her Ph.D. in 2015 at the University Hospital Cologne (Clinic I for Internal Medicine, Prof. Michael Hallek), focusing on microenvironmental influences in B-cell malignancies. After postdoctoral and co-principal-investigator positions in Professor Hallek’s group, she established an independent research trajectory on tumor–host communication and immune regulation in leukemia and solid tumors.

Since 2021, Hien Nguyen has led the Career Advancement Program group CAP-19 at the CMMC and, since 2023, heads the Laboratory for Tumor-Host Interdependence at the University Hospital Cologne, Clinic I for Internal Medicine. She has contributed to the successful acquisition of collaborative networks, including the DFG CRC 1530 and the NRW CANTAR initiative. In 2023, she was appointed Principal Investigator (IPFP A 09) at the CMMC. Her interdisciplinary research integrates molecular and cellular biology, signal transduction analyses, immunology and translational oncology to understand how the tumor microenvironment shapes disease progression and therapy response.

Hien Nguyen is the main author of papers published in HemaSphere, Nature Communications, Neuro-Oncology, Leukemia, Blood Advances and Cancer Cell. Her publications also appear in Cell Death & Disease, Frontiers in Immunology, Blood Cancer Discovery, EMBO Molecular Medicine and Blood. Her representative works have provided fundamental discovery and mechanistic insights into the role of tyrosine kinases in the tumor microenvironment, revealing how kinases orchestrate the polarization of bystander cells to regulate their tumor-supportive capacity. This line of research has laid the foundation for new clinical trial concepts aiming at repurposing existing kinase inhibitors to remodel the TME.

Link to PubMed

Hien Nguyen’s research is supported by major funding bodies, including the DFG, the NRW Ministry of Culture and Science, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, and the German José Carreras Leukemia Foundation. She also received grants from the Köln Fortune Foundation and from the CMMC’s Career Advancement and Independent Principal Investigator schemes.

Hien Nguyen’s group continues to investigate how immune and stromal components shape tumor behavior and therapy resistance across cancer types. Future work will integrate single-cell multi-omics, spatial profiling, and functional perturbation assays to delineate microenvironmental circuits. Through close collaboration with clinical partners, she seeks to translate mechanistic insights into combination therapies that enhance patient response. A strong advocate of open and reproducible science, Hien Nguyen is building interoperable data resources and training programs to equip young researchers at the interface of cancer biology, immunology, bioengineering, and clinical oncology.

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