Stories
Stem cell scientists explore the mysteries of regeneration at the Junior Faculty Candidate Seminar and Symposium
How can we regenerate tissues that are damaged, lost or diseased in the human body? This was the central question driving the four scientists who presented their research at the Junior Faculty …
California’s stem cell agency awards USC $5 million to train scientists and clinicians
USC has been awarded a $5 million training grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to prepare PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and clinical fellows for careers in stem cell research. …
USC Stem Cell: An incubator for medicine of the 21st century
Just over a decade ago, USC was a university with a few scattered stem cell biologists, and a vision for total transformation. The university was committed to designing a unique “incubator” for …
USC-led study traces the blueprints for how human kidneys form their filtering units
When it comes to building a kidney, only nature possesses the complete set of blueprints. But a USC-led team of scientists has managed to borrow some of nature’s pages through a comprehensive …
USC Professor Scott E. Fraser redefines impossible problems
USC Professor Scott E. Fraser is known for inventing new microscopes and other tools to observe living, developing embryos. But one of his lab’s most important pieces of technology filters coffee instead …
The same cell type can help or hinder repair after acute kidney injury
The USC Stem Cell laboratory of Andy McMahon has identified a type of injured cell that might contribute to the transition from an acute kidney injury to chronic kidney disease, as described …
USC Stem Cell scientists make big progress in building mini-kidneys
A team of scientists at the Keck School of Medicine of USC has created what could be a key building block for assembling a synthetic kidney. In a new study in Nature …
Remembering Eli Broad
It is with great sadness that we learned of the passing of Eli Broad. Eli and Edythe’s philanthropy in the arts, science and education have been transformative. Eli approached philanthropy with an …
USC celebrates Robert E. Maxson’s lifetime of achievement and adventure
USC Emeritus Professor Robert E. Maxson has an understated explanation for why he’s flown so many planes, sailed so many boats, skied so many mountains, played so many guitars, taken so many …
USC Stem Cell study identifies molecular “switch” that turns precursors into kidney cells
Kidney development is a balancing act between the self-renewal of stem and progenitor cells to maintain and expand their numbers, and the differentiation of these cells into more specialized cell types. In …
Scientists Justin Ichida and Dion Dickman: USC’s coolest tenured professors from Hawaii
Now that Justin Ichida and Dion Dickman are both tenured professors at USC, they no longer have to worry about who was the coolest kid in their elementary schools back in Honolulu. …
USC Stem Cell PhD student Tracy Tran: Celebrating the journey of a budding developmental biologist
As a child in Vietnam, Tracy Tran helped her family run a small business importing porcelain products from China and assumed she would follow in their footsteps. Neither of her parents had …
Happy 10th anniversary to USC’s stem cell research center
On October 29, 2010, we opened the doors of the Eli and Edythe Broad CIRM Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC. Today, on the 10th anniversary of the …
California’s biggest stem cell experiment: The impact of the stem cell ballot proposition at USC
In 2008, USC broke ground on an $80 million building dedicated solely to stem cell research and regenerative medicine. The plans called for a monolithic structure clad in black marble and reflective …
USC Stem Cell’s high school program Zooms ahead
In late February 2020, 10 local high school juniors gathered at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC for the first meeting of a …
USC Stem Cell scientists use “mini-lungs” and lung models to understand COVID-19
USC scientists are testing out experimental COVID-19 treatments on human “mini-lungs” and lung models, grown in the laboratory using stem cells. With names such as organoids and lung-chips, these simplified, lung-like structures …
A Message from Director and Chair Andy McMahon
I hope that this message finds you safe and well. As we return to our labs, I thought this would be a good time to let you know about what has been …
Shanghai Cell Therapy Group launches collaboration with USC researcher to improve the ex vivo expansion of hematopoietic stem cells for clinical applications
Shanghai Cell Therapy Group (SHCell) recently entered into a six-year research collaborative project with Professor Qi-Long Ying from the University of Southern California (USC). Through the project, sponsored by $3.6 million from …
USC Professor Andrew P. McMahon elected to the National Academy of Sciences
Andrew P. McMahon—who is the W.M. Keck Provost and University Professor in USC’s departments of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine, and Biological Sciences at the …
The Broad Foundation brings together stem cell scientists, engineers and physicians at USC and beyond
Developing new stem cell therapies requires more than a solo biologist having a eureka moment alone in the lab. Real progress relies on collaborations between biologists, engineers and physicians. That’s why The …