Harold Chung, MD

Biography

A collaborator on a skilled team fighting cancer

Dr. Harold Chung says one of the best things about coming to work is the collaboration with doctors, nurses, pharmacists and the rest of the team at the Cellular Immunotherapies and Transplant (CIT) Program at VCU Massey Cancer Center.

“I have the luxury of working with a great team of health care professionals, each with their own strengths and talents and approaches to caring for patients,” Chung says.

Chung specializes in treating blood-born disorders, such as leukemia, myeloma and lymphoma. In his advanced toolkit for battling cancers and related disorders: stem cell transplantation, radioimmunotherapy, high dose therapy and chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapies.

Massey Cancer Center was the first in Virginia to offer an FDA-approved CAR-T therapy, which is used to treat certain forms of lymphoma and leukemia. One key advantage of CAR-T therapy is that it requires only a single infusion and typically one week of inpatient care, as opposed to the six months or more of chemotherapy, specialized post-transplant care and lifestyle restrictions for those with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and childhood leukemia patients no longer responding to conventional therapies.

Chung, an associate professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, is helping further build Massey’s CIT program. “It takes hard work, dedication, learning to work as a team and experience to learn the theoretical, and more importantly, the practical approaches to health care,” Chung says.

Outside of work, Chung enjoys the stamina boost he gets from going running regularly. He also works on antique cars and can bring “most of them” back to life. He enjoys traveling with his family and watching his children grow and explore the world.

Advice to patients: “Time and patience are vital in getting through the rigors and challenges of cellular immunotherapies and transplants. The road can be long with unforeseen obstacles. Take each day, one day at a time, and have a good support system around you to help you get through the occasional tough times.”