Han Zhu, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Fellow

I conducted my Ph.D. research in the laboratory of Dr. Zhenguo Wu at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Here, I used mouse muscle stem cells as a model to dissect signaling pathways regulating adult stem cell self-renewal and exit from quiescence.  My work revealed that mutations that impair muscle stem cell proliferation and self-renewal altered the local immune cell behavior, leading to inflammation and fibrosis in mice. My research led to my current interest to understand the complex crosstalk between the immune system and tissue resident cell types. Thus, I joined the Sander laboratory is 2018 to study islet inflammation during normal tissue homeostasis and T2D disease progression. Another major focus of my research here is T2D disease modeling using hESC-derived pancreatic beta cells and cutting edge CRISPR techniques to model the effects of variants associated with high T2D disease risk.

Publications:

Wang G, Zhu H, Situ C, Han L, Yu Y, Cheung TH, Liu K, and Wu Z. (2018) p110α of PI3K is necessary and sufficient for quiescence exit in adult muscle satellite cells. The EMBO Journal.37:  e98239.

Zhu H, Xiao F, Wang G, Wei X, Jiang L, Chen Y, Zhu L, Wang H, Diao Y, Wang H, Ip NY, Cheung TH, and Wu Z. (2016) Stat3 regulates self-renewal of adult muscle satellite cells during injury-induced muscle regeneration. Cell Reports.16: 2102-2115.

Diao Y, Guo X, Li Y, Sun K, Lu L, Jiang L, Fu X, Zhu H, Sun H, Wang H, and Wu Z. (2012) Pax3/7bp is a pax7- and pax3-binding protein that regulates the proliferation of muscle precursor cells by an epigenetic mechanism. Cell Stem Cell.11: 231-241.