For the first time ever, the City of Los Angeles hosted the world’s largest stem cell conference. By choosing Los Angeles as the host city for this major annual meeting, the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) acknowledged the city’s growing importance as a hub for the biosciences, as well as the world-class research …
How do our skeletons form during embryonic development? To approach this question, PhD student Dion Giovannone, research scientist Sandeep Paul and the USC Stem Cell laboratory of Gage Crump looked to our not-so-distant relative: the tiny, transparent zebrafish. Crump explains their latest findings, published in eLife, about how embryonic cartilage transforms into adult bone. How …
Children are not as hard-headed as adults—in a very literal sense. Babies are born with soft spots and flexible joints called sutures at the junctions where various sections of their skull bones meet. If these sutures fuse prematurely, the skull cannot expand to accommodate the child’s growing brain—a serious birth defect called craniosynostosis that can …
It didn’t require plane tickets to bring together scientists from USC Stem Cell in Los Angeles and BCRegMed in Vancouver. During October’s Virtual Symposium, videoconferencing technology enabled these scientists to share ideas as if they were sitting in the same conference room—even though they were more than 1,200 miles apart.
A little over a year after arriving at USC, D’Juan Farmer has been awarded one of the most prestigious fellowships available to postdoctoral fellows. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Hanna H. Gray Fellows Program supports early-career life scientists from groups underrepresented in the life sciences. The fellows receive up to $1.4 million in funding …
Students and trainees took center stage at the annual retreat for USC’s Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. They presented their latest research to the 180 stem cell scientists who gathered at the event, held at the Pala Mesa Resort in Fallbrook, California this September.
In the developing face, how do stem cells know whether to become cartilage, bones or teeth? To begin to answer this question, scientists from the USC Stem Cell laboratory of Gage Crump tested the role of a key family of genes, called “Forkhead-domain transcription factors,” or Fox. Their findings appear in the journal Development.
If you lose a limb, it’s lost for life. If you damage a kidney, you won’t grow a new one. And if you have a heart attack, the scars are there to stay. But regenerative medicine is poised to change all of this. Building new tissue is within sight, and USC scientists are among the …
Scientists in the USC Stem Cell laboratory of Gage Crump have revealed how key genes guide the development of the jaw in zebrafish. These findings may offer clues for understanding craniofacial anomalies in human patients, who sometimes carry a mutation in equivalent genes.
“The process of disease is about detail,” said Larry Goldstein, the director of the stem cell program at the University of California, San Diego, and keynote speaker at the retreat for USC’s Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. Held on October 20 and 21 at the Pala Mesa Resort in Fallbrook, California, the …
During his career as a developmental biologist, Hearst Fellow Peter Fabian has studied many kinds of fish—from bichir and sturgeon, to gar and medaka. However, his favorite is the zebrafish, the current focus of his postdoctoral training in the USC Stem Cell laboratory of Gage Crump. “I like zebrafish most,” said Fabian. “It’s a very …
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has recognized USC scientist Gage Crump with an Award for Sustaining Outstanding Achievement in Research—an eight-year, $8 million grant to support the development of stem cell-based treatments for patients with craniofacial diseases.
After her breakthrough discovery that zebrafish can be used to study arthritis, postdoctoral fellow Joanna Smeeton has received a prestigious National Institutes of Health (NIH) Pathway to Independence Award. Known as the K99/R00, the award will help her transition from the postdoctoral to the faculty stage of her career.
“Everyone in this audience right now, you all started out as a stem cell,” said Natasha Natarajan at the 2017 TEDxUSC conference. “And then your DNA came in, did all the work, and differentiated each group of your stem cells into your muscles, into your heart, into your brain until we get the finished product: …
The L.K. Whittier Foundation has been a critical source of funding for cancer research at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, supporting clinicians and basic scientists who are advancing tailored therapies and nanobiotechnology.
“I think we’re all here for the same reason,” said Michaela Patterson, a postdoc in the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC. “We’re considering applying for faculty jobs, and we’re at a loss for where to start.” To prepare themselves for the rigors of the application process, …
Can a fish with a malformed jaw tell us something about hearing loss in mice and humans? The answer is yes, according to a new publication in Scientific Reports.
The price of progress is not only the energy and talent of stem cell scientists, but also the research dollars that support their discoveries. In recent months, faculty members have secured numerous grants to support stem cell-based approaches to study and treat illnesses ranging from osteoarthritis to Alzheimer’s disease to cystic fibrosis. Here are a …
D’Juan Farmer grew up in a neighborhood where attending college—let alone pursuing a PhD or postdoctoral training—was not the expectation. Now, he’s earned the inaugural Choi Family Postdoctoral Fellowship, which provides support to recruit exceptional postdoctoral fellows to USC Stem Cell laboratories. How did Farmer do it? “Willpower,” said Farmer, who is pursuing his postdoctoral …
USC Stem Cell scientist Gage Crump is one of seven faculty members with ties to the Health Sciences Campus receiving USC Mentoring Awards. The awards recognize faculty who exemplify the best in mentoring activities and programs, creating environments that further the academic success of students and faculty.
