Sung Eun Kim
University of Texas at Austin, TX·Biomedical Engineering
Spina bifida happens when the spinal cord's developing tube fails to close fully. It is a type of neural tube defect, the second most common birth defect in humans, and it can cause lifelong disability.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Biology
Genetics
- Topics
spina bifida
neural tube defect
birth defects
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- 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.
- Determine how GPR161 loss interacts with the teratogens vismodegib and valproic acid to disrupt human spinal neural tube formation in lab-grown organoids.
- Build a Spinal Neural Tube-on-a-chip that uses controlled microfluidic flow and mechanical cues to mimic the changing environment of the embryo during tube formation.
- Compare the cellular and molecular profiles of spinal neural tubes grown on the chip with those from static 3D organoid cultures.
More about the research
Both genes and environmental exposures contribute, often in combination. Animal models have limits here, because their genetic background and drug sensitivity differ from humans. This project aims to build human tissue models that show how a genetic risk and a harmful drug exposure together disrupt formation of the spinal neural tube.
Why it matters
Spina bifida causes lifelong disability and neurological problems for affected children. A human-relevant model of how genetic risk and drug exposures disrupt spinal tube formation could clarify why some pregnancies are affected. It could also help test which medications are risky during pregnancy. The stated long-term goal is progress toward new strategies to prevent or treat spina bifida.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Quinton Smith
University of California-Irvine, CA·Biomedical Engineering
Test how paracrine signals and mechanical cues guide early cell fate decisions, using micropatterned induced gastrulation models of human induced pluripotent stem cells confined to defined geometries.
Mark Grimes
University of Montana, MT·Biomedical Engineering
Test whether seeding human neural crest stem cells in 3D hydrogel scaffolds with extracellular matrix components identified in organoids makes craniofacial cartilage faster and more reproducibly than self-organizing organoids.
Shahin Rafii
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
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.
The school
University of Texas at Austin: 49 labs on PI Pages, $1.1B a year on research, 871 research doctorates a year.
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