Yuxuan Miao
University of Chicago, IL·Microbiology & Immunology
Stem cells in the skin and other barrier tissues must keep working even when the tissue around them is inflamed. After a wound, immune cells rush in to fight infection and clear debris, but they also release toxic substances that can harm stem cells.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Biology
Genetics
- Topics
epithelial stem cells
hair follicle stem cells
wound healing
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Jun 2030
What they work on
- Use in vivo CRISPR screens and stem cell interactome sensors in mouse skin to find how epithelial stem cells remodel nearby immune cells into a temporary protective niche after wounding.
- Apply in vivo Perturb-seq, linking gene knockouts to single-cell gene activity, and cell/organelle tagging to learn how epithelial stem cells reprogram metabolism to tolerate inflammation.
- Identify the precursor cells that give rise to regulatory T (Treg) cells induced in healing mouse wounds, testing whether wound effector T cells convert directly into Tregs.
- Determine which T-cell receptors respond to CD80, a signaling protein raised by hair follicle stem cells after injury, and how CD80 stabilizes Foxp3, the Treg master gene.
- Map the Sox2-activated gene network in TGFβ-responding tumor-initiating cells that creates an immune-suppressive environment in mouse squamous cell carcinoma, using ultrasound-guided in utero lentiviral delivery.
- Define how the transcription factor Sox2 boosts the built-in immune resistance of tumor-initiating cells that drive SCC relapse after immunotherapy.
More about the research
Older people and those with chronic conditions often have wounds that heal slowly or not at all, costing more than $25 billion a year in U.S. healthcare. A related problem appears in cancer: in squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs), skin-type cancers including those of the head and neck, tumors often come back after immunotherapy. The lab's projects share one question: how do epithelial stem cells, and cancer cells that copy their features, survive and even reshape the immune environment around them? Its grants study this in mouse wound healing and mouse SCC tumors, using an ultrasound-guided in utero technique to change genes quickly in the skin of live mice.
Why it matters
Non-healing wounds affect millions of people, especially older adults and those with chronic illness. Learning how skin stem cells recruit regulatory T cells and adapt to inflammation could point to new ways to manage these wounds. In squamous cell carcinomas, such as head and neck cancers, the Sox2 program in tumor-initiating cells could reveal targets for making immunotherapy work longer and preventing relapse.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Decipher the immunemodulatory functions of epithelial stem cells during wound repair
NIH · Jul 2026 – Jun 2030
Dissecting the Sox2-orchestrated transcriptional network that governs immune resistance in tumor initiating cells
NIH · Jan 2024 – Dec 2028
Genetic mapping of the inflammatory adaption circuit in epithelial stem cells
NIH · Sep 2023 – Jul 2028
Closest labs
William Lowry
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Biology
Test whether raised glutaminolysis, the breakdown of glutamine for fuel, keeps hair follicle stem cells dormant when they lack lactate dehydrogenase (Ldh), using gain- and loss-of-function targeting of metabolic steps.
Yejing Ge
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, TX·Genetics
Define how DNA methylation and histone methylation silence retrotransposons in adult mouse skin, using genetic mice that lack a key epigenetic repressor of these repeats.
Pooja Flora
University of California-Riverside, CA·Biology·Early-career
Characterize how gene expression and chromatin accessibility change with age across the distinct stem cell pools of adult skin, including basal interfollicular epithelial stem cells and hair follicle bulge stem cells, using multi-omics profiling.
The school
University of Chicago: 39 labs on PI Pages, $681M a year on research, 457 research doctorates a year.
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