Description of Research Expertise

As Director of the human pluripotent stem cell (PSC) core, established in 2008 within the Center for Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, our mission is to provide expertise and quality-control reagents for culture and differentiation of human PSCs to the research communities. The Core occupies 1500 sq ft on the 5th floor of the Colket Translational Research Building and has served the entire CHOP/UPENN community with distribution of available iPSC lines made with patient cells of clinical interest and NIH-approved embryonic stem cell lines. The Core has generated over 13 control and more than 200 iPSC lines from patients of interest. All PSCs display virtually unlimited self-renewal in culture, can be induced to differentiate into mature tissues derived from all three germ layers, including blood, pancreas and neurons; and can be genetically manipulated using genome-editing technologies. The Core has SOPs for PSC growth and maintenance, differentiation to germ layer and derivative tissue of interest, and genome editing technologies including CRISPR/Cas. Accordingly, these cell lines offer great long-term promise in the fields of tissue engineering for cell-based therapeutics and regenerative medicine. The Core also provides hands-on enrichment/training courses for investigators interested in learning how to establish and work with PSCs. This is a well-attended training course from investigators both on the CHOP/UPENN campus and nationally and internationally. Technologies for creating and manipulating PSCs are evolving rapidly and we are dedicated to incorporating the latest technologies and protocols to the research community.