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, …

Can the novel coronavirus—SARS-CoV-2—cause diabetes? No one knows, but Senta Georgia, PhD, is trying to find out. Dr. Georgia, an investigator in The Saban Research Institute of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, recently received a $100,000 peer-reviewed grant from the American Diabetes Association to examine the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on pancreatic beta cells (cells in the …

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 …

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 …

“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 …

Courtesy of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Adding a piece of DNA to treat diabetes A child develops a rare form of diabetes, due to the absence of a single piece of DNA in his genetic code. At Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, a dedicated researcher is working to cure this young patient. How? With gene-editing technology …

“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, …

Part of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles’ “We Went First” feature for 2017 Women’s Day Credit a school field trip with inspiring Senta Georgia to change the world. When Georgia was a young woman growing up in New Jersey, her fifth-grade class took a field trip to a local chemical company, and students got a chance …

You can be anything you want—just like a stem cell. This was a key lesson for the 500 middle and high school students who attended the USC Stem Cell Day of Discovery on Saturday, February 4, on the Health Sciences Campus of the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

Earlier this year, a team at the Karolinska Institute published a paper that profiled gene activity in single cells from human embryos created in the context of in vitro fertilization. Now this group has announced their plans to edit the DNA of normal human embryos to study how changing the activity of these genes affects early …

In the human pancreas, groups of so-called “endocrine cells” secrete the hormones insulin and glucagon, which are critical for regulating blood glucose levels; dysregulation of hormone secretion can lead to diabetes. In a recent edition of the journal Diabetes, Klaus Kaestner and colleagues published a study looking at the pattern of active or “expressed” genes …

Senta Georgia—principal investigator at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA), and assistant professor of pediatrics, and stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at USC—has a creative idea for helping children with a genetic form of diabetes and malabsorptive diarrhea called enteric anendocrinosis. And through its Discovery Inception program, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has …

What don’t we know about human development, and what can go wrong? By focusing on these two big questions, a new 2-unit fall course will provide USC undergraduates with the opportunity to go beyond the standard developmental biology course work. In MEDS 335 — Human Development: From Stem to Sternum — students will learn about …

Provost Michael Quick convened the inaugural USC Stem Cell Symposium with a straightforward truth about the future of regenerative medicine: “it will take a dedicated community of scholars across the disciplines to have maximum impact.” The January 16 symposium brought together precisely such a community, with speakers hailing from USC’s schools of medicine, dentistry, gerontology …

For Senta Georgia, PhD, stem cell research offers a window into much more than the biology of pancreatic cells and diabetes. “Molecular biology is elegant,” said Georgia, principal investigator at the Saban Research Institute of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) and assistant professor at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. “And what really moves …