Woojin M. Han, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Orthopaedics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The Han Laboratory develops cell-instructive biomaterials to systematically study how stem cells interact with their niche in regulating tissue pathophysiology, with a primary focus on skeletal muscle stem (satellite) cells and fibro/adipogenic progenitors. His team also establishes regenerative therapies for treating injuries and diseases of the musculoskeletal system by harnessing cell-matrix interactions. Dr. Han has previously engineered a synthetic cell-instructive matrix for facilitating the transplantation and engraftment of muscle stem cells in the context of muscle injury and Duchenne muscular dystrophy. By independently tuning multiple material properties through parametric design, Dr. Han and his team have successfully developed a synthetic cell delivery platform conducive to muscle stem cell survival, proliferation, migration, and differentiation for targeting limb muscle trauma and dystrophic diaphragms. His research program will continue to integrate multidisciplinary bioengineering concepts to pioneer new technologies for dissecting stem cell-niche interactions and advancing regenerative therapies for musculoskeletal injuries and disorders.

Ongoing research interests include:

• Understanding how niche-derived physicochemical cues regulate muscle stem cell polarity, fate determination, and mechanotransduction in development, aging, and diseases.
• Engineering niche-mimetic platforms to direct muscle stem cell manufacturing.
• Developing cell-instructive biomaterials to treat skeletal muscle injuries and disorders.

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Robert Krauss, PhD, is a Professor of Cell, Developmental, and Regenerative Biology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Co-director of the Development, Regeneration, and Stem Cells training area for graduate students. His lab is interested in how niche-derived signals regulate stem cell function, using the skeletal muscle lineage as a model system. His lab showed that cadherins are niche factors that promote quiescence of skeletal muscle stem cells under homeostatic conditions, and regulate activation of these cells in response to injury, thereby facilitating tissue regeneration. His lab uses a variety of approaches, including mouse genetics and molecular cell biology, to address questions about how the muscle stem cell niche is constructed, maintained, and functions. The Krauss Laboratory also studies the Nodal and Hedgehog signaling pathways and how deficiency in these pathways results in the common birth defect, holoprosencephaly.

Ongoing research interests include:

• Exploring how cadherins regulate cytoskeletal architecture in muscle stem cells to provide structural integrity, mechanosensation, and cell polarity
• Identifying and analyzing the components of the adherens junction formed between muscle stem cells and their major niche cell, the myofiber
• Modeling the complex etiology of holoprosencephaly in mice
• Assessing functional consequences of human mutations involved in holoprosencephaly

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