Director
Brigid Hogan, Ph.D., FRS
Department of Cell Biology

Executive Committee:
Nelson Chao, M.D.
Farshid Guilak, Ph.D.
Joanne Kurtzberg, M.D.

Developmental and Stem Cell Biology Training Program

Overview
Our program brings together basic scientists and clinicians studying stem cells in a variety of adult and developing organ systems. The goal is to understand and exploit their remarkable capacity to maintain healthy tissues and to replace cells lost by disease or injury. Program highlights include:

  • Pioneering studies on therapeutic applications of bone marrow and cord blood stem cells
  • Use of bioengineered scaffolds to grow new tissues from stem cells
  • High resolution imaging of stem cells in living tissues, and their relationship with blood vessels and nerve cells migrating into developing organs
  • Identification of natural signals that control how stem cells behave
  • Investigations of germline stem cells and their regulation by RNA binding proteins and miRNAs
  • Learning from zebrafish, which have much greater capacity than humans to regenerate organs after injury
  • Studying how cancers arise from, and can be maintained by, stem cells
tracheosphere

New 3D clonal growth assay for stem/progenitor cells of the mouse trachea and human airway epithelium
An “Open Access” paper in PNAS represents the culmination of collaborative efforts by researchers from both Duke and UNC Chapel Hill to identify stem/progenitor cells in the pseudostratified epithelium of the mouse and human respiratory system. More...

Clara cells

Lineage tracing progenitor cells in the lung over the long term. Emma Rawlins, a postdoctoral fellow in the Hogan lab has completed the first long term analysis of epithelial cells known as Clara cells during the maintenance and repair of the mouse lung. More...

Brain Tumors Initiated in Neural Progenitors or Stem Cells. Medulloblastoma is the most common malignant brain tumor in children, but the cells from which it arises remain unclear. The Weschsler-Reya lab used conditional mutant mice to examine the origin of medulloblastoma resulting from mutations in the hedgehog signaling pathway. More...

Organ Homeostatis

Organ Homeostatis.
 In two studies, we have found that the developmental machinerary that regenerates amputated appendage or cardiac tissue is also involved in homeostatic regeneration. More...

Regulation of the Neuroendocrine Progenitors in the Fetal Testis. During testis development, the neuroendocrine cells of the testis (fetal Leydig cells) increase their population from a pool of progenitor cells rather than from proliferation of a differentiated cell population, although the mechanisms governing their self-renewal and differentiation were unknown. More...

Zebrafish Fin

Zebrafish Fin Regeneration.
Appendage regeneration requires rapid modification of genetic programs, transforming differentiated, functioning structures into proliferative, actively patterned tissue. More...

Identification of CD15 as a Marker for Tumor-Propagating Cells in a Mouse Model of Medulloblastoma. The growth of many cancers depends on self-renewing cells called cancer stem cells or tumor-propagating cells (TPCs). More...

2010 Duke Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Innovation Award Recipients
David Kirsch: Soft tissue sarcomas are cancers that arise in connective tissues including the fat, muscle, and blood vessels. The Kirsch lab has developed a novel mouse model of soft tissue sarcoma that is initiated in stem cells. The Innovation Award will allow us to characterize this model to investigate the cancer stem cell hypothesis.
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