Shahin Rafii
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Injured organs often heal poorly, forming scar tissue (fibrosis) instead of working tissue. This research tests the idea that endothelial cells (ECs), the cells that line blood vessels, hold a key to better healing.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biomedical Engineering
Biology
- Topics
endothelial cells
angiocrine factors
vascular niche
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Mar 2031
What they work on
- Identify transcription factors that give endothelial cells organ-specific identities by growing ETV2-engineered R-VECs and stem-cell-derived iVECs with heart, lung and blood organoids or in injured mice, then using RNA profiling and motif discovery.
- Validate candidate organ-specific transcription factors by overexpressing or knocking them down in endothelial cells, and test primate-derived cells for regeneration in pigtail macaques.
- Define how Fli1, Erg and c-Maf keep liver sinusoidal endothelial cells specialized at steady state and during regeneration, and how this prevents fibrosis after CCl4 liver injury in mice.
- Determine how c-Maf in Kupffer cells, the liver's resident immune cells, maintains the vessel-lining cells and supports liver health during regeneration and injury.
- Use the human Hepatic-on-VascularNet microfluidic platform to study how c-Maf is induced in human liver ECs, and test whether infused c-Maf-induced cells restore repair after acetaminophen injury.
- Build gastrointestinal radiation injury models in a human Gut-On-VascularNet platform and define how NKX2-3+ intestinal ECs program monocytes into reparative macrophages.
- Screen pro-repair factors, such as amphiregulins and epiregulins, as countermeasures for radiation injury to the intestine in vascularized intestinal organoids.
More about the research
In each organ these cells become specialized. They release organ-specific growth signals called angiocrine factors that guide stem cells and other cells to rebuild tissue. The projects ask how ECs gain these organ-specific identities and how restoring that identity could repair the heart, lung, blood system, liver and irradiated intestine without scarring.
Why it matters
Advanced liver disease is often curable only by transplant, and no treatment exists for radiation damage to the intestines after nuclear accidents or radiotherapy. This work could lead to cell therapies using organ-specific endothelial cells that repair liver, lung, heart or blood tissue without scarring. Human vascularized organoid platforms may also help test drugs to protect against radiation injury when human trials are not possible.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Adaptable and hemodynamic Gut-On-VascularNet models to mitigate radiation injury
NIH · Apr 2026 – Mar 2031
Molecular Determinants of liver sinusoidal endothelial cells for hepatic regeneration
NIH · May 2023 – Mar 2028
Adaptable tissue-specific endothelial cells for organ regeneration
NIH · Apr 2020 – Mar 2027
Closest labs
Rebecca Craig-Schapiro
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Assess how selective, conditional loss of NKX2-3, a transcription factor that marks islet-specific endothelial cells, in pancreatic blood vessel cells affects islet function.
Daniel Garry
University of Minnesota, MN·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether GFP-labeled pig stem cells with mismatched MHC immune genes can rescue pig embryos lacking the heart-building genes NKX2-5, TBX5 and HAND2, using blastocyst complementation.
Sung Eun Kim
University of Texas at Austin, TX·Biomedical Engineering
Test how loss of GPR161, a gene strongly linked to spina bifida, changes how neuromesodermal progenitors form the spinal neural tube, using knockout human iPSC-derived 3D organoids.
The school
Weill Medical College of Cornell University: 35 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 59 research doctorates a year.
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