Human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) as subjects of study can tell us about molecular changes and states associated with pluripotency and stemness, and they are also tremendous tools for drug discovery, disease modeling, and regenerative medicine. Their potential clinical applications are so promising because they offer the potential opportunity to use cells derived from a patient’s own somatic cells to induce differentiation into cells that could be used to regenerate tissues or treat genetic disease with gene-corrected cells without transplant rejection.

Characterizing Hematopoietic Stem Cells of the Liver

Understanding the role of sialylation in MSC survival and behavior

Characterization of Fibroblasts and Their Role in the Tumor Microenvironment:

Inhibiting Naturally Occurring Diapause in Pluripotent Stem Cell Cultures

The ultimate goal of my research is to screen inhibitors that will mimic naturally occurring diapause in pluripotent stem cells cultures (PSCs).

Developing a treatment for Lyme Disease

Huntington’s Disease (HD) is a fatal autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disease that is caused by a mutation in the Huntington gene, or HTT gene. The HTT gene encodes for the protein huntingtin. Wild type HTT gene contains a CAG trinucleotide of 10-35 repeats on exon 1 of chromosome 4. In mutated HTT, the CAG segment can be repeated from 36 to 120 times. The increased size of the CAG repeat encodes for an elongated form of the HTT protein. Once the elongated protein is produced, it is then cut into smaller toxic fragments.

Knockdown of SMOX and SAT1 to elucidate polyamine function within bone formation and proliferation in MSCs

Determining X Chromosome Inactivation Across Neuronal Differentiation in Patient-Derived Cells as a Putative Model to Study Epigenetic Editing Tools

Engineering extracellular mimics (EV-mimics) from plasma membranes