The Medicine by Design Global Speaker Series invites established and emerging international leaders in regenerative medicine to engage with our extraordinary community of researchers and clinicians.
Join speaker, Mingxia Gu, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
Hosted by Medicine by Design, in partnership with the McEwen Stem Cell Institute.
Talk title: Unveiling the Mysteries of Vascular Development and Regeneration with Advanced Human Organoid Models
About Mingxia Gu
Dr. Mingxia Gu is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. She received her medical training from Peking University in Beijing, China, and pursued a joint-training Ph.D. program at Peking University and Stanford University in Dr. Joseph Wu’s laboratory. Following her time as an AHA postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Marlene Rabinovitch’s lab at Stanford, she joined Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in early 2020, holding joint appointments in the Center for Stem Cell & Organoid Medicine (CuSTOM) and Divisions of Pulmonary Biology, Molecular Cardiovascular Biology, and Developmental Biology. Dr. Gu has published at top-tier journals, such as Cell Stem Cell, Science Translational Medicine, and Circulation Research, and her lab is well-funded by NIH, the Single Ventricle Research Foundation, and the American Heart Association. The Gu lab focuses on dissecting signaling mechanisms guiding tissue-specific endothelial cell fate commitment and developing innovative therapeutic strategies for regenerating vascular beds in congenital heart and lung defects.
Talk abstract
To investigate the co-development of vasculature, mesenchyme, and epithelium crucial for organogenesis and the acquisition of organ-specific characteristics, we constructed a human pluripotent stem cell-derived organoid system comprising lung or intestinal epithelium surrounded by organotypic mesenchyme and vasculature. We demonstrated the pivotal role of co-differentiating mesoderm and endoderm via precise BMP regulation in generating multilineage organoids and gut tube patterning. Single-cell RNA-seq analysis revealed organ specificity in endothelium and mesenchyme, and uncovered key ligands driving endothelial specification in the lung (e.g., WNT2B and Semaphorins) or intestine (e.g., GDF15). Upon transplantation under the kidney capsule in mice, these organoids further matured and developed perfusable human-specific sub-epithelial capillaries. Additionally, our model recapitulated the abnormal endothelial-epithelial crosstalk in patients with FOXF1 deletion or mutations. Multilineage organoids provide a unique platform to study developmental cues guiding endothelial and mesenchymal cell fate determination, and investigate intricate cell-cell communications in human organogenesis and disease.
This event will be held in-person only at the Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Biomolecular Research, Red Room.