Research

Our laboratory focuses on the study of how adult stem cells alter myocardial cell loss and left ventricular remodeling following myocardial ischemia and potential mechanisms of myocardial regeneration.

We investigate molecular mechanisms responsible for stem-cell homing to, and stem-cell differentiation in, injured myocardium. We have identified families of stem-cell homing factors and shown that prolongation or reestablishment of these factors results in preservation of cardiac myocytes, revascularization of tissue, and improvement in cardiac function. This strategy is under review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a cell-based gene therapy for patients with chronic heart failure. We are exploring strategies for moving adult cardiac stem-cell therapy to gene therapy.

We study cell-penetrating peptides as a means of delivering transcription factors for inducing stem-cell differentiation without the need to engineer the embryonic stem cell itself. We also study the ability of secretable transcription factors to alter cardiac function and adult stem-cell differentiation in vivo.

Our studies on adult stem-cell-based repair of the heart have suggested an innate repair process involving the SDF-1/CXCR4 axis. We are studying the potential effects of this on ischemic tissue injury in the kidney and brain following stroke.

We continue to examine several distinct populations of adult stem cells to determine the common mechanisms of benefit, as well as if there is an adult stem-cell population that can bring about efficient regeneration of cardiac myocytes.