When learning to become a great scientist, the most important lesson might be how to collaborate. To encourage this essential skill, for the past decade, USC Stem Cell has awarded one-year challenge grants of up to $15,000 to small teams of PhD students and postdoctoral fellows launching cross-disciplinary research projects that span two or more labs.
During the 2025–2026 academic year, three teams will receive Broad Collaborative Challenge Grants for Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Fellows.
One winning project unites PhD students from two labs in the Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC: Moise Bonheur from Unmesh Jadhav’s lab and Gabriella Rita Pangilinan from Yulia Shwartz’s lab. The team will investigate how a gene called ETS1 activates a specialized immune program in “epithelial” cells that line tissues and organs, enabling them to trigger inflammation during injury and, when not properly shut down, drive chronic inflammation across tissues. Using inflammatory bowel disease and psoriasis as models, they will reveal the pivotal but largely overlooked role of epithelial cells in initiating and sustaining inflammatory responses, shifting the focus beyond immune cells, the usual targets of current therapies.
A second project brings together Cynthia Dharmawan from Zhipeng Lu’s lab at the USC Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Samantha Ruiz from Yao Wei Lu’s lab in the Department of Medicine and the Hastings Center for Pulmonary Research at the Keck School. Their research will explore new strategies to enhance the differentiation of stem cells into heart muscle cells, with the long-term goal of contributing to the development of a cell source for regenerative therapies to treat heart disease. In particular, they will study how an essential amino acid, methionine, influences stem cell self-renewal and differentiation into heart muscle cells.
The third project involves trainees from two labs jointly affiliated with the Keck School and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles: PhD student Timothy Hunt from Senta Georgia’s lab and postdoctoral fellow Arianna Barbetta from Juliet Emamaullee’s lab. They aim to understand why patients face an increased risk of developing Type 2 diabetes within 6 months of recovering from infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Because diabetes results from impaired insulin production in the pancreas, the scientists will study the pancreases of rhesus macaques infected with SARS-CoV-2. Using spatial proteomics, which is mapping the location of proteins within cells and tissues, they will visualize and identify molecular signatures associated with regeneration, recovery, or dysfunction of the pancreas.
“These grants give our students and trainees a means to develop their scientific independence by allowing them to initiate projects and pursue the creative ideas that truly inspire them,” said Chuck Murry, Director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC, and Chair of the Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. “Even more importantly, these grants encourage our trainees to adopt the collaborative spirit required to do science at the highest level. We’re grateful to Dean’s Office at the Keck School of Medicine for their support.”