Understanding how our organs develop and renew themselves throughout life in healthy individuals, and how these processes are derailed in disease, has enormous potential to uncover new avenues for regenerative therapies. The scientists at the interdisciplinary Institute of Regenerative Medicine are carrying out cutting-edge basic, translational, and clinical research to alter stem cell activity and create new drugs and therapeutic cells in order to bring life-changing benefits to patients. By uncovering how normal, aging, and diseased tissues function, our researchers are committed to identifying better ways to treat congential diseases, repair diseased or damaged tissues, promote healthy aging, and fight cancer.
In the Black Family Stem Cell Institute (BFSCI), our scientists are discovering how stem cells in the embryo give rise to tissues in normal development, how these mechanisms are altered in developmental diseases, and how adult stem cells are regulated in normal, aging, and diseased organs. Our researchers are developing ways to produce adult-like cells and tissues from human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells in order to model human disease in the dish, screen for drugs that can effectively treat these diseases, and generate therapeutic cells and tissues that can be used to replace or regenerate diseased, damaged, or aged tissues.
Members of the Alper Center for Neural Development and Regeneration (ACNDR) are studying brain development and disease and screening for new therapies for autism, age-related memory loss, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease, among other conditions. Using animal models, our researchers study brain development and diseases in living organisms. Excitingly, our researchers have also developed “human brain on a chip” methods which recreate human mini-brains in a dish. This enables the study of human-specific developmental and disease processes and screening for drugs that are specifically effective in humans.
Researchers in theCenter for Advancement of Blood Cancer Therapies (CABCT)are working to uncover mechanisms of blood disorders such as leukemias and immune deficiencies using human models of normal and malignant blood-cell formation, specifically primary human cells, human-induced pluripotent cells (hiPSCs), and transplants of patient cells into mice. They are using this information to develop new therapeutics, including conventional drugs and cell therapies.
Epithelial tissues such as the skin, hair, and lung are maintained by specialized populations of cells. Decreased or altered activity of these cells underlies a range of diseases and conditions including inflammatory skin disease, hair loss, pulmonary disease (including risk of COVID-19 complications), and cancers. In the Center for Epithelial and Airway Biology and Regeneration (CEABR), our researchers are conducting patient-oriented studies, including analyzing diseased human tissues at the single cell level. They are using sophisticated genetic approaches to study disease processes in mouse models and human cell-derived systems to better understand and treat these conditions.