Welcome to the CReM

Advancing science to heal the world.
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Mission & Vision

Advancing science to heal the world.

The Center for Regenerative Medicine (CReM) of Boston University and Boston Medical Center is a physically contiguous state-of-the-art facility housed in newly renovated expansive space located on the Boston University Medical Campus. The Center’s footprint consists of 10,000 sq ft of wet bench space and 6,000 sq ft of offices.

Open-source biology

In a nutshell, Open Source Biology refers to the sharing of reagents, ideas, databases and expertise without boundaries or exclusivity. This philosophy is at the center of our mission of ‘advancing science to heal the world’. All CReM research initiatives are thus pursued with our overarching mission in mind. In keeping with this purpose, we embrace an Open Source approach to scientific research, endorsing the free sharing of our published reagents without delays or constricting material transfer agreements (MTA).

Our most important protocols and vector sequences are also posted on our website for free download, as one illustration of our Open Source philosophy. We realize that at times our mission and philosophy is at odds with today’s focus on protecting intellectual property and the needs of institutions and industry. Thus, we have written a constitution, documenting principles that guide our decisions and approaches to collaborations.
We encourage fellow academic scientists to join us in our approach, and we hope that with time this approach will become the mainstream of academic medicine where discoveries and reagents are truly ‘for all mankind’.

The CReM’s Open Source Biology Approach: Guiding Principles

Principle 1

Reagents, tools, vectors, cell lines, and protocols generated by the CReM and requested by academic researchers or not-for-profit organizations will be shared by the CReM as quickly as possible.

Principle 2

When entering collaborations or sharing reagents, tools, vectors, or cell lines with industry partners, we will consider entering into MTA or other legal intellectual property agreements as we understand that the differing needs of industry partners requires them to have legal IP protection in place before proceeding with collaborations.

Principle 3

All human and animal research will only be conducted with institutional regulatory approval, such as IACUC and IRB oversight.

Principle 4

Published protocols, vector sequences, and bioinformatics databases (e.g. microarray files), will be either posted on our website for free download, posted on the national Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) for free download, or shared free of charge by email request with academic and not for profit researchers.

CReM Labs

We are a dynamic group of investigators passionate about stem cells, developmental biology and regenerative medicine. Our members come from more than 15 different countries and get together to fulfill our mission: Advancing science to heal the world.

CReM Leadership

The Center for Regenerative Medicine (CReM) at Boston University’s Medical Campus is dedicated to advancing stem cell research and regenerative medicine for the sake of patients — particularly those suffering from diseases seen at Boston Medical Center, the teaching hospital of Boston University School of Medicine.

Director

Darrell Kotton, MD
Professor of Medicine
Director
Center for Regenerative Medicine (CReM)
Darrell Kotton

Co-Director

Gustavo Mostoslavsky, MD PhD
Associate Professor of Medicine
Gastroenterology Section
Co-Director, CReM

Administrators

Amelia Jay
Lab Assistant
CReM
Greg Miller, PhD
Lab Manager
CReM
Gregory Miller
Gabrielle Cockerham, MPH
Administrative Assistant
CReM
Gabrielle Cockerham
Meenakshi Lakshminarayanan, MBA
Administrative Director
CReM

Core Managers

Marianne James, PhD
iPSC Core Manager
CReM
Pushpinder Bawa, PhD
Bioinformatics Core Manager
CReM
Pushpinder Bawa

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The Kotton lab’s goal is advancing our understanding of lung disease and developmental biology with a focus on stem cell biology and gene therapy. We believe that novel treatments for many lung diseases can be realized based on a better understanding of how the lung develops as well as regenerates after lung injury.

We are particularly interested in defining the genomic and epigenomic programs that regulate cell fate, and a long-term goal of ours is generation of the full diversity of lung lineages from pluripotent stem cells in vitro.

We have established a major research program based on the use of patient-specific iPS cells for disease modeling and the hope that it will lead in the near future to the development of novel regenerative medicine therapies.

The Wilson lab is focused on two major aspects of regenerative medicine:

1) Developing gene therapy approaches for the study and treatment of lung diseases: The ability to manipulate gene expression in specified lung cell populations has both experimental and therapeutic potential for lung disease. By developing viral vectors that transduce specific lung cell types in vivo, we hope to minimize potential off-target effects while maximizing our ability to target diseased cell populations. We work with lentiviral and AAV vectors to overexpress or knockdown expression of genes important to disease pathogenesis in the lung.

2) Utilizing induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) to study human lung and liver diseases: The Wilson lab is interested in the application of patient-derived iPS cells for the study of lung and liver diseases, such as alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (AATD).

The Hawkins Lab is interested in how the human lung develops and responds to injury to better understand human lung disease. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) offer a unique opportunity to model human lung disease and bridge the gap between research in animal models and humans.

Using this iPSC platform, we are focused on understanding the molecular mechanisms that control human lung development. We hope to apply this knowledge to advance our understanding of and develop precision medicine approaches for lung disease.

The Murphy laboratory is composed of dynamic and passionate researchers who utilize multiple stem cell-based platforms to answer basic biological questions and combat disease. Central directions of the laboratory include: developmental hematopoiesis, the modeling of blood-borne disease, and discovery and therapeutic intervention in sickle cell disease, amyloidosis, and aging.

The Murphy Lab has pioneered: The world’s largest sickle cell disease-specific iPSC library and platforms and protocols that can used to recapitulate hematopoietic ontogeny and to develop and validate novel therapeutic strategies for the disease; The successful modeling of a protein folding disorder called familial amyloidosis demonstrating the ability to model a long-term, complex, multisystem disease in a relatively short time, using lineage-specified cells (hepatic, cardiac and neuronal) derived from patient-specific stem cells; The first iPSC library created from subjects with exceptional longevity (centenarians) that serves as an unlimited resource of biomaterials to fuel the study of aging and the development of novel therapeutics for aging-related disease.

www.murphylaboratory.com

@DRGJMurphy

The Serrano Lab studies neurodevelopment and cardiovascular development in the context of rare multi-systemic disorders originated by pathogenic variants in epigenetic modifiers like KMT2D.  

We aim to identify shared molecular and cellular mechanisms driving cardiovascular and brain development with particular interest in cell differentiation, migration, and cell cycle progression.  

Our lab combines rare disease modeling in zebrafish together with cardiovascular and neurobiology techniques and human iPSC-derived brain organoids and endothelial cells.  

We believe that a patient-forward focus to our projects will help us to get better understanding of disease mechanisms through basic science research. To this end, we are active in the collaborative community among field experts and rare disease patient-advocacy groups who drive our research program to identify therapeutic targets in patient-specific iPS cells. 

The Mostoslavsky Lab is a basic science laboratory in the Section of Gastroenterology in the Department of Medicine at Boston University.

Our goal is to advance our understanding of stem cell biology with a focus on their genetic manipulation via gene transfer and their potential use for stem cell-based therapy.

The Mostoslavsky’s Lab designed and constructed the STEMCCA vector for the generation of iPS cells, a tool that has become the industry standard for nuclear reprogramming. Project areas in the lab focuses on the use of different stem cell populations, including embryonic stem cells, induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells, hematopoietic stem cells and intestinal stem cells and their genetic manipulation by lentiviral vectors.

Our laboratory have already established a large library of disease-specific iPS cells with a particular interest in utilizing iPS cells to model diseases of the liver, the gastrointestinal tract, prion-mediated neurodegenerative diseases and immune-based inflammatory conditions, using iPSC-derived microglia, macrophages and T/NK cells.

The Gouon-Evans lab investigates cellular and molecular mechanisms driving liver development, regeneration and cancer. We specifically interrogate the role of progenitor/stem cells and how they share similar molecular signature and functions during these 3 processes.

Our innovative tools include: 1) directed differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells (PSC) to generate in vitro liver progenitors and their derivative hepatocytes, the main functional cell type of the liver, 2) mouse models with lineage tracing strategy to track in vivo the fate of progenitor cells, 3) PSC derivative cell transplantation into mouse models with damaged livers as cell therapy for liver diseases, 3) dissection of liver cancer specimens from patients to identify and define the impact of specific cancer stem cells in liver oncogenesis.

Projects in the Gouon-Evans lab will lead to a better understanding of the liver development, to the establishment of multi-modular approaches for improving liver regeneration with PSC derivatives, and will reveal the impact of specific cancer stem cells as a target for diagnosis and therapy in liver oncogenesis.