Jayakar Nayak
Stanford University, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Cystic fibrosis (CF) is an inherited disease caused by mutations in one gene, CFTR, which makes a channel that moves chloride ions and water across the surface of airway cells. When the channel is broken, mucus and other secretions become thick and sticky.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biomedical Engineering
Genetics
- Topics
cystic fibrosis
∆F508
airway basal stem cells
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2027
What they work on
- Identify which biomaterial platform, a scaffold that carries cells, best supports transplanting and engrafting human airway basal stem cells moved from culture into living airway tissue.
- Test how CFTR gene-corrected airway basal stem cells from CF patients behave in culture after CRISPR/Cas9 repair of the ∆F508 mutation.
- Assess how gene-corrected human airway stem cells survive and function after transplant, using the team's microsurgical animal model of upper airway transplantation.
More about the research
In the airways this leads to repeated infections and inflammation in the sinuses and lungs. Medicines have improved care, but patients still need lasting treatments. This project works toward a stem cell therapy: take a patient's own airway stem cells, repair the faulty gene in the lab, and put the repaired cells back into the airway.
Why it matters
People with cystic fibrosis suffer repeated airway infections and inflammation, and current medicines do not offer a lasting fix. The project lays the groundwork before any trial in patients for transplanting a patient's own gene-corrected airway stem cells into the sinuses. If this works, it could become the first stem cell-based therapy for human airway disease and a more durable treatment for CF.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Martina Gentzsch
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Medicine & Clinical Research
Provide lab-grown cell models and mouse and rabbit models of cystic fibrosis to study how defects in CFTR, the salt-and-water channel protein, cause disease, and to test new drug targets and treatments.
Matthias Salathe
University of Kansas, KS·Physiology
Test whether high glucose, acting through the RAGE receptor, reduces BK potassium channel activity and drains airway surface liquid in cystic fibrosis bronchial epithelial cells grown in the lab.
Lucas Hoffman
University of Washington, WA·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Test whether highly effective CFTR modulator therapy changes the gut microbiome and fecal metabolites, including bile acids, of people with cystic fibrosis, using stool samples and clinical data from two national observational studies.
The school
Stanford University: 87 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 739 research doctorates a year.
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