Rong Lu and Keyue Shen receive NIH R21 Trailblazer Award

Riddle me this: how do you get stem cells to thrive outside of their natural environment? According to Keyue Shen, if all else fails, you can always trick them—with artificially engineered neighbor cells. Shen, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering, and Rong Lu, an assistant professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, recently won Read More…

Rong Lu teaches course about how to design an experiment

For future scientists, few skills are more essential than the ability to design a good experiment. In a new spring 2018 course, SCRM 517 Historical and Contemporary Stem Cell Research, Professor Rong Lu will impart this important skill to graduate students at USC. “The course will give students an overview of what has been done Read More…

Lisa Nguyen presents at ISSCR 2017 Annual Meeting

Ask Lisa Nguyen what gets her blood racing, and her answer will be hematopoietic stem cells, or HSCs. She’ll be presenting about HSCs at the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) Annual Meeting in Boston in June 2017. To read more, visit stemcell.usc.edu/2017/06/05/meet-phd-student-lisa-nguyen-presenter-at-the-isscr-2017-annual-meeting.

USC’s stem cell scientists secure the dollars to fight disease

The price of progress is not only the energy and talent of stem cell scientists, but also the research dollars that support their discoveries. In recent months, faculty members have secured numerous grants to support stem cell-based approaches to study and treat illnesses ranging from osteoarthritis to Alzheimer’s disease to cystic fibrosis. To read more, Read More…

What I’m reading: Rong Lu offers top pick

In a recent issue of Nature, Philipp S. Hoppe and colleagues present their work on how blood-forming cells, called hematopoietic progenitors, commit to becoming particular blood cell types. Previously, scientists thought that these choices were determined by random changes in the levels of gene regulatory proteins called transcription factors that are linked to programming different Read More…

Rong Lu tells Cell Stem Cell about the “Path to My Lab’s First Paper”

In an interview with Cell Stem Cell, Drs. Rong Lu, Alvaro Rada-Iglesias, and Jennifer Phillips-Cremins share a behind-the-scenes look at what it took for them to set up their labs and eventually publish their group’s first paper. They share advice, surprises, and frustrations they faced along the way. To read the full article, visit cell.com/cell-stem-cell/fulltext/S1934-5909%2816%2930417-9.