Year 4
The Developmental Biology and Regenerative Medicine Research Program of The Saban Research Institute seeks to discover the basic mechanisms of stem and progenitor cell function in human organ development, and apply them to tissue repair and regeneration. Recent advances in developmental biology hold great promise in many areas of human adult as well as child health, where organ regeneration, stem cell based therapy or tissue engineering could be life saving. Under this CIRM training grant, Fellows are devising therapeutic targets for eventual translation to the bedside including lung hypoplasia or injury caused by prematurity or aging, short gut, kidney diseases, heart regeneration and diabetes. The training environment in this CIRM program brings clinical surgery and pediatric medicine together with basic research and is organized into organ-based sections that train Fellows to carry out scientific inquiries within the overall program focus of organogenesis, injury repair, tissue regeneration and engineering.