Three scientists from Keck Medicine of USC have won grants exceeding $4.3 million from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) for research that includes creating a temporary liver for patients, finding novel ways to treat immune disorders and blood diseases, and developing new animal models for heart failure, diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases. The grants, …

Neuromuscular diseases are debilitating and mostly incurable, affecting 160 out of every 100,000 people worldwide. Disorders such as ALS and multiple sclerosis impact the function of muscles, causing muscle wastage and loss of motor function. A major hurdle in the fight against these diseases is the fact it is notoriously difficult to grow tissue in …

Megan McCain has always liked using her hands to create things, ranging from art projects to human heart cells that grow on silicon chips. “I’ve always loved building things and doing crafts, which drew me to engineering,” said McCain, who was recently awarded tenure as an Associate Professor and the Chonette Early Career Chair in …

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. But just for the record, it was Ichida. As a third-generation Hawaiian, Ichida fit right in. His background was similar to many on …

The human brain is an incredibly complex organ to study in its living tissue form. Researchers cannot experiment on human tissue directly, and animal models are often too different to human physiology to be effective. For this reason, in the last decade, neurological research has been increasingly turning to “brain-on-a-chip” organoid models to give researchers …

A record six assistant professors at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering — Megan McCain, Department of Biomedical Engineering; Mitul Luhar, Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engienering; Aleksandra Korolova and Haipeng Luo, Department of Computer Science; and Daniel McCurry and Qiming Wang, Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering — have received the prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Award for innovative and novel research …

Cut a zebrafish’s heart and something remarkable happens. Within seconds, the fish clots the wound and stops the bleeding. Cells start to divide to make new heart muscle and blood vessels. Two months later, the zebrafish has completely regenerated its heart. If only we could do that. It turns out that zebrafish’s heart resembles that …

Growing stem cells isn’t just something junior faculty do in the lab. Eight of the junior faculty in the Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine recently welcomed new babies into their families—more than half of them within the past year. Here, our junior faculty parents share their joy and wisdom about balancing career …

“The field of stem cell biology is one of our great convergence opportunities,” said USC Provost Michael Quick, addressing an audience of biologists, chemists, physicists, engineers, clinicians and many others. This diverse group came together for the Interdisciplinary Stem Cell Symposium, hosted by USC Stem Cell and the USC Medicine, Engineering, Science and Humanities (MESH) …

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.

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 …

In a narrow room not much larger than a closet, Joycelyn Yip reaches behind a glass shield to lower a pipette to a plate of silicon-coated glass. Swaddled in a sterile white cloak, latex gloves and safety goggles, she drizzles a chemical compound onto a colony of stem cells before returning them to a nearby …

“I’ve always wanted to be in a textbook and impact the world,” said Gio Suh, who is graduating in December 2017 from the master of science program in stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

“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 …

“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, …

Megan McCain, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, and stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, has been honored with the Chonette Early Career Chair at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. As an endowed chair, the position is supported by a donor’s endowment and is one of the highest honors a university can bestow on a …

Ching-Ling (Ellen) Lien, an investigator at The Saban Research Institute of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) and principal investigator with USC Stem Cell, has been awarded nearly $1.7 million, over a four year period, from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health to study the molecular and cellular mechanisms …

Studying muscular diseases proves extremely complicated. The current system of studying muscle cells and tissues using animal models is often inconclusive and cost-prohibitive. Looking to improve the status quo, Megan McCain—a Gabilan Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at USC—has directed her research on engineering muscle tissue as an …

Megan McCain has received a 2016 Scientist Development Grant from the American Heart Association. The three-year, $231,000 grant supports highly promising early career scientists in cardiovascular and stroke research. McCain—Gabilan Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, and Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine—and her research team will focus specifically on developing human-based platforms to test drugs …

USC researcher Megan L. McCain and colleagues have devised a way to develop bigger, stronger muscle fibers. But instead of popping up on the bicep of a bodybuilder, these muscles grow on a tiny scaffold or “chip” molded from a type of water-logged gel made from gelatin. First authors Archana Bettadapur and Gio C. Suh …

Two teams of scientists have won the inaugural Eli and Edythe Broad Innovation Awards in Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at USC. This year’s competition provides $120,000 each to the teams for developing new ways to engineer and study what are known as “organs in a dish” or “organs on a chip.” Since the …