How do the lungs respond to injury? How can we stimulate the lungs to regenerate effectively?
The Huang Lab focuses on the study of biological processes and signaling pathways that affect lung progenitor responses to injury, which may shed light on therapeutic targets for debilitating lung diseases that affect millions of people worldwide. We will integrate the use of human iPSCs-derived platforms with genetic mouse models to study how lung progenitors self-renew and transdifferentiate after lung injury, and why this process is dysregulated in diseases such as pulmonary fibrosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung adenocarcinoma.
Dr. Jessie Huang received her Ph.D. in Environmental Health and Engineering from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, where she worked in the laboratory of Dr. Steven An to elucidate the role of G protein-coupled receptors in airway smooth muscle function. For her postdoctoral training with Dr. Darrell Kotton at Boston University, she focused on the use of human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived lung alveolar epithelial type 2 cell (AT2) models to study the the role of AT2s in lung disease. Dr. Huang opened her lab at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine in February of 2024.