Matthew Chang

Matthew Chang
Alma mater	Seoul National University University of Maryland
Occupation	Biochemist university teacher scientist
Website	https://medicine.nus.edu.sg/bch/faculty/chang-matthew/
Academic career
Fields	Synthetic biology, Metabolic engineering
Institutions	National University of Singapore Nanyang Technological University University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Matthew Wook Chang is a Korean American synthetic biologist based in Singapore. He is a professor and Provost's Chair in Medicine at the Synthetic Biology Translational Programme and Department of Biochemistry, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore. ^[1]

Chang's research focuses on studying the engineering of biology to develop autonomous, programmable cells for biomedical and biomanufacturing applications. He has made significant contributions to synthetic biology, authoring over 130 scholarly publications. ^[2]

Education

Chang graduated with Bachelor of Science (Cum Laude), Chemical and Biological Engineering from Seoul National University in 1998. He then completed a PhD at the University of Maryland's Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in 2003. ^[3]

Career and research

After graduating from his PhD, Chang worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the Office of Pesticide Programs of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency for a year. From 2004 to 2007, he was a research assistant professor at the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute's Center for Biosystems Research.

In 2007, he moved to Singapore to join the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) as an assistant professor at the School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering. He later joined National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2013.

At NUS, Chang is the director of the NUS Synthetic Biology for Clinical and Technological Innovation (SynCTI), which is the university's focal synthetic biology research program. ^[4] Concurrently, he is also director of the Wilmar-NUS Corporate Laboratory (WIL@NUS), a research partnership between NUS and the agribusiness company Wilmar International Limited, ^[5] and the Singapore Consortium for Synthetic Biology (SINERGY), ^[6] an initiative that promotes research discussions across academia, industry, and government.

Chang's research focuses on studying the engineering of biology to develop autonomous, programmable cells for biomedical and biomanufacturing applications across various industries. Along with colleague Poh Chueh Loo, his group is widely recognised for the use of synthetic biology to tackle infectious diseases. He engineered Escherichia coli bacteria to 'seek and kill' Pseudomonas aeruginosa , an invasive bacterium known to cause pneumonia and other illnesses. ^{[7] [8] [9] [10] [11]} Later on, he engineered probiotic E. coli to inhibit Clostridioides difficile infection, a leading cause of healthcare-associated infectious diarrhoea worldwide. ^[12]

Beyond infectious disease, Chang and his colleagues have engineered bacteria that selectively target colorectal cancer cells, destroying them by converting a compound naturally found in cruciferous vegetables into a potent anticancer agent. ^[13]

He is the Editor-in-Chief of Biotechnology Notes. He co-led the establishment of the Asian Synthetic Biology Association (ASBA) ^[14] and the Global Biofoundry Alliance (GBA). ^{[15] [16]} He is also part of the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Synthetic Biology ^[17]

Awards

• Co-Chair, World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Generative Biology (2025-) ^[18]
• National Research Foundation of Singapore's Investigatorship Award (2019) ^[19]
• NUHS-Mochtar Riady Pinnacle Research Excellence Award (2019) ^[20]
• Presidential Award from the Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies (2019) ^[21]
• Scientific and Technological Achievement Award, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for "Advancing the Agency's Antimicrobial Testing Program Abilities to Genomic Investigation of Microbial Pathogens" (2007) ^[22]

References

1. "Matthew Chang". Matthew Chang. Department of Biochemistry, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. Retrieved 25 August 2025.
2. "Google Scholar". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 25 August 2025.
3. University of Maryland. "Researchers Engineer Bacteria to Hunt Down Pathogens in the Gut". University of Maryland. Retrieved 25 August 2025.
4. "NUS making waves in the brave new world of synthetic biology". EurekAlert!. Retrieved 25 August 2025.
5. "New Wilmar-NUS joint lab to drive innovation in food-tech and sustainable biochemicals". New Wilmar-NUS joint lab to drive innovation in food-tech and sustainable biochemicals. Retrieved 22 August 2025.
6. "Sinergy". Sinergy. Retrieved 25 August 2025.
7. Saeidi, Nazanin; Wong, Choon Kit; Lo, Tat-Ming; Nguyen, Hung Xuan; Ling, Hua; Leong, Susanna Su Jan; Poh, Chueh Loo; Chang, Matthew Wook (January 2011). "Engineering microbes to sense and eradicate Pseudomonas aeruginosa , a human pathogen". Molecular Systems Biology. 7 (1) 521. doi:10.1038/msb.2011.55. PMC   3202794 . PMID   21847113.
8. Turner, Marian (16 August 2011). "Set a bug to kill a bug". Nature. doi:10.1038/news.2011.483.
9. Hwang, In Young; Tan, Mui Hua; Koh, Elvin; Ho, Chun Loong; Poh, Chueh Loo; Chang, Matthew Wook (18 April 2014). "Reprogramming Microbes to Be Pathogen-Seeking Killers". ACS Synthetic Biology. 3 (4): 228–237. doi:10.1021/sb400077j. PMID   24020906.
10. Peplow, Mark (11 September 2013). "Engineered bacterium hunts down pathogens". Nature. doi:10.1038/nature.2013.13727.
11. Hwang, In Young; Koh, Elvin; Wong, Adison; March, John C.; Bentley, William E.; Lee, Yung Seng; Chang, Matthew Wook (11 April 2017). "Engineered probiotic Escherichia coli can eliminate and prevent Pseudomonas aeruginosa gut infection in animal models". Nature Communications. 8 (1) 15028. Bibcode:2017NatCo...815028H. doi:10.1038/ncomms15028. PMC   5394271 . PMID   28398304.
12. Koh, Elvin; Hwang, In Young; Lee, Hui Ling; De Sotto, Ryan; Lee, Jonathan Wei Jie; Lee, Yung Seng; March, John C.; Chang, Matthew Wook (4 July 2022). "Engineering probiotics to inhibit Clostridioides difficile infection by dynamic regulation of intestinal metabolism". Nature Communications. 13 (1): 3834. Bibcode:2022NatCo..13.3834K. doi:10.1038/s41467-022-31334-z. PMC   9253155 . PMID   35787625.
13. Ho, Chun Loong; Tan, Hui Qing; Chua, Koon Jiew; Kang, Aram; Lim, Kiat Hon; Ling, Khoon Lin; Yew, Wen Shan; Lee, Yung Seng; Thiery, Jean Paul; Chang, Matthew Wook (January 2018). "Engineered commensal microbes for diet-mediated colorectal-cancer chemoprevention". Nature Biomedical Engineering. 2 (1): 27–37. doi:10.1038/s41551-017-0181-y. PMID   31015663.
14. "Asian Synthetic Biology Association(ASBA)". synbioasia.org.
15. "Home". Global Biofoundries Alliance.
16. Hillson, Nathan; Caddick, Mark; Cai, Yizhi; Carrasco, Jose A.; Chang, Matthew Wook; Curach, Natalie C.; Bell, David J.; Le Feuvre, Rosalind; Friedman, Douglas C.; Fu, Xiongfei; Gold, Nicholas D.; Herrgård, Markus J.; Holowko, Maciej B.; Johnson, James R.; Johnson, Richard A.; Keasling, Jay D.; Kitney, Richard I.; Kondo, Akihiko; Liu, Chenli; Martin, Vincent J. J.; Menolascina, Filippo; Ogino, Chiaki; Patron, Nicola J.; Pavan, Marilene; Poh, Chueh Loo; Pretorius, Isak S.; Rosser, Susan J.; Scrutton, Nigel S.; Storch, Marko; Tekotte, Hille; Travnik, Evelyn; Vickers, Claudia E.; Yew, Wen Shan; Yuan, Yingjin; Zhao, Huimin; Freemont, Paul S. (9 May 2019). "Building a global alliance of biofoundries". Nature Communications. 10 (1): 2040. Bibcode:2019NatCo..10.2040H. doi:10.1038/s41467-019-10079-2. PMC   6506534 . PMID   31068573.
17. "Synthetic Biology" . Retrieved 25 August 2025.
18. "Synthetic Biology" . Retrieved 9 September 2025.
19. "NRF Investigatorship 2019 Awardees". www.nus.edu.sg. Retrieved 2 September 2025.
20. "Matthew Chang". medicine.nus.edu.sg. Retrieved 2 September 2025.
21. "Matthew Chang". medicine.nus.edu.sg. Retrieved 2 September 2025.
22. "Matthew Chang". medicine.nus.edu.sg. Retrieved 2 September 2025.