Christin Kuo
Stanford University, CA·Biology
The airways of the lung contain rare cells that sense the environment, release signals, help control breathing and can repair injured tissue. These are pulmonary neuroendocrine cells (NECs), which share features of nerve cells and hormone-producing cells.
- Fields
Biology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Genetics
- Topics
pulmonary neuroendocrine cells
neuroepithelial bodies
lung progenitor cells
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2029
What they work on
- Identify and characterize a subset of neuroendocrine progenitors (NEPr) in distal human airway neuroepithelial bodies, using precision cut lung slice cultures from healthy adult lungs.
- Activate NEPr with acute injury models in lung slice cultures and whole donor lungs, and map their molecular profiles and surrounding 'niches' using spatial transcriptomics.
- Test whether NEPr are a major source of DIPNECH, an overgrowth of lung neuroendocrine cells, by applying single-cell and spatial transcriptomics to patient tissue.
- Identify the mitogenic, or growth-promoting, pathway that controls distal human NEPr division and could serve as a therapeutic target.
More about the research
Most of what is known about NECs comes from mice. Far less is known about NECs in humans: where they sit, which of them can act as stem-like progenitors, and how they respond to injury. This gap matters because human diseases in which NECs grow out of control look different depending on where in the airway they start. Earlier work by this team built a detailed, cell-level map of human NECs and found anatomical, tissue and molecular diversity that mouse models do not show.
Why it matters
Several human respiratory conditions involve abnormal growth of neuroendocrine cells, and they are poorly understood. Identifying the human progenitor cells and the signals that make them divide could reveal therapeutic targets for DIPNECH and related distal airway disorders. It could also enable more accurate organoid and iPSC models of these diseases for researchers.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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Tulane University of Louisiana, LA·Microbiology & Immunology
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The school
Stanford University: 87 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 739 research doctorates a year.
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