We work towards understanding the mechanisms of cellular reprogramming that governs the transformation of a somatic cell into a pluripotent one. We identify regulatory genes and gene products that govern the state of pluripotency. We use this knowledge to generate human isogenic pluripotent stem cells and to improve the efficiency of somatic cell nuclear transfer.
Our Team
Dr. Jose Cibelli, Professor
Departments of Animal Science & Physiology
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Dr. Cibelli currently holds the position of Professor of Animal Biotechnology at Michigan State University. He heads the Cellular Reprogramming Laboratory in the Departments of Animal Science and Physiology. From October 1999 until December 2002 he was the vice president for research of Advanced Cell Technology, a stem cell company in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Dr. Cibelli is one of the pioneers in the area of cloning with transgenic somatic cells for the production of animals and embryonic stem cells. Dr. Cibelli together with his colleagues, were responsible for the generation of the world’s first transgenic cloned calves, the first embryonic stem cells by nuclear transfer and the first embryonic stem cells by parthenogenesis in primates. This was followed by publications in Science, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Medicine, PNAS and JAMA. He has testified about nuclear transfer and stem cells in public forums sponsored by the US Food and Drug administration, the USA National Academy of Sciences, Canadian House of Commons, the USA Department of Agriculture and the United Nations Commission for Human Rights.
Dr. Cibelli also serves as the Associate Scientific Director of the ‘Program for Cell Therapy and Regenerative Medicine of Andalucía’, Seville, Spain; the International Committee of the ‘International Stem Cell Research Society’, the Ethics Committee of the ‘American Society of Gene Therapy’ and the Scientific and Medical Accountability Standards Working Group of the ‘California Institute for Regenerative Medicine’.
Steve Suhr
Research Assistant Professor (August 2006 – present)
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Dr. Suhr earned his Ph.D. from Northwestern University and worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California-San Diego, The Salk Institute, and the University of Michigan prior to joining the Cellular Reprogramming Laboratory in 2006. His primary interest is in the use of advanced cell and animal models to develop novel therapies for human neurological and neuromuscular diseases that currently have limited effective treatments such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, and traumatic brain/spinal cord injury. In the CRL, his group is exploring the potential of "indirect" and "direct" reprogramming methods to respecify cellular identity. One area of current focus is a better understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying the conversion of cell phenotype, and to determine if all cells have the same capacity for reprogramming.
LEFT: An iNC immunostained for the mature neuron marker synapsin I, produced by infection of adult human skin fibroblasts with the factors ASCL1, POU3F2, and ZIC1.
RIGHT: An iSMC produced by infection of human fetal lung fibroblasts with myogenic transcription factors. Red immunostaining shows the muscle marker alpha-actinin.
Eun-Ah Chang
Research Assistant Professor (July 2004– present)
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Eun-Ah Chang is a Research Assistant Professor in the Cellular Reprogramming Laboratory (CRL). She graduated from the Medical College of Chung-Ang University at Seoul in Korea, 1992. Dr. Chang completed her residency in Clinical Pathology at Chung-Ang Medical Hospital, and she did her fellowship training in Hemato-Oncology with Bong-Hak Hyun, MD, PhD at Ajou University Hospital in 1999. She received her PhD in 2000 and her PhD thesis was involved in the ‘Clinical significance of p53, MDM2, CyclinD1 protein expression in patients with Multiple Myeloma'. She has a board certified in clinical pathology of Korea. Dr. Chang has worked as a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine at the University of Korea before she joined the CRL. At the University of Korea, her main research there involved Diagnostic Hemato-oncology, and Immunology.
Her early research at the CRL showed a relationship between neuronal differentiation potential of hESCs and psychoneurologic drug (Prozac) treatment for the first time. More recently, she has been responsible for the generation of human pluripotent stem cells from somatic cells using reprogramming vectors. Her activities include generating and characterizing induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells from pre-clinical species and humans as well as optimizing in vitro differentiation protocols that deliver terminally differentiated cell types with defined functional characters.
Marcelo Goissis, MS
Graduate Research Assistant (August 2008 – present)
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Marcelo graduated from University of Sao Paul, Brazil in 2005 in Veterinary Medicine. In 2008 he completed his Master's Degree in Animal Reproduction at the same university with the thesis "Use of extracellular matrix (MatrigelTM) for establishment of porcine embryonic stem cells and expression characterization of pluripotency related molecules" under the supervision of Dr Jose Antonio Visintin. In August 2008, Marcelo started his PhD studies in Animal Science at Michigan State University, performing research on cellular reprogramming in the bovine model under the supervision of Dr Jose Cibelli. Throughout his training Marcelo gained skills in bovine herd management, transrectal ultrasonography, radioimmunoassay, cell culture, flow cytometry, immunocytochemistry, porcine and bovine in vitro embryo production, bovine somatic cell nuclear transfer, and molecular biology, including gene cloning and quantitative PCR. He is currently working on Wnt signaling pathways in bovine preimplantation embryos and reprogramming of bovine somatic cells.
Jiesi Luo
Graduate Research Assistant (May 2008 – present)
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Jiesi earned his bachelor's degree in Animal Science from China Agricultural University, Beijing, China in 2007. He is now pursuing his PhD under the guidance of Dr Cibelli and his project includes investigation of pluripotency of animal embryonic stem cells, and mammalian and early embryonic development. His proposed project focuses on generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from canine somatic cells. The aim of his project is to elucidate the potential requirements for producing iPSCs from dog adult stem cells, in an effort to help form a template for development of regenerative medicine to aid dogs paralyzed by spinal cord injuries. The second area of Jiesi's studies include investigation of the anti-apoptotic effect of sphingosine-1-phosphate on in vitro development of bovine embryos.
Bradly Alicea
Research Associate (July 2009 - Present)
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Bradly joined the laboratory in 2009, and since joining has worked on 1) understanding complex relationships between the translatome and transcriptome, 2) the discrete dynamical modeling of cell populations undergoing reprogramming, and 3) the application of systems biology-oriented measurement/analytical techniques to wide range of cell types, including those with pluripotent and neuronal characteristics.
Dr. Jose Cibelli, Professor
Marcelo Goissis, MS
Bradly Alicea