Tietze Research Awards to two NDRG faculty members

Grants, Honors / /

Both grants offered in 2026 by the John H. Tietze Foundation Trust have been awarded to NDRG faculty members.

Katie Liu received the Jaconette L. Tietze Young Scientist Award. The award will support her lab’s efforts to use patient-derived adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells to improve repair of their injured nerves.

Mark Bothwell received the John H. Tietze Stem Cell Scientist Award. The award will allow gene-edited induced pluripotent stem cells to be produced to permit drug-controlled expression of the transcription factors EGFR2 and EGR3, which are master regulators of differentiation of myelinating Schwann cells from stem cells.

Both projects illustrate NDRG’s commitment to discover approaches to block degeneration and improve regeneration of peripheral nerves.

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Engineered human neuromuscular junctions

Publications, Research / /

NDRG investigators, led by Alec Smith, in collaboration with Curi Bio, have just published a study creating engineered neuromuscular junctions from human induced pluripotent stem cells. Our platform enables simultaneous measurement of neuromuscular junction function across 24 engineered tissues! We’re now working with industry leaders to use this system as a means to remove animal testing from the development of botox products that are widely used in both the medical and cosmetic fields.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666027X25000040?via%3Dihub#f0025

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NDRG Team Publishes Paper about ALS Disease Mechanisms

Publications, Research / /

Changho Chun is lead author of a paper that was just accepted for publication in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Human Motor Neurons Elicit Pathological Hallmarks of ALS and Reveal Potential Biomarkers of the Disease in Response to Prolonged IFNγ Exposure reveals that exposure of motor neurons to interferon-γ promotes cytoplasmic mis-localization of TDP-43 protein – a hallmark of ALS.

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Alec Smith and NDRG team awarded NIH R21 grant

Grants, Research / /

Alec Smith is the PI of a newly awarded NIH R21 grant to study muscle spindle dysfunction in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. David Mack, Mike Regnier, and Mark Bothwell are co-investigators.

Muscle spindles are sensory end organs in muscle that allow sensation of muscle position and movement. As muscle spindles are comprised of clusters of specialized types of muscle fibers, their proper function is likely dependent on dystrophin, just as the muscle proper is. Dystrophin mutations in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy cause a loss of muscle cell dystrophin. Thus, it is plausible that DMD patients may experience muscle spindle dysfunction, which may contribute to the tendency of DMD patients to suffer frequent falls.

In order to develop an experimental system to study human muscle spindle function, Alec and team will produce muscle spindle cells in vitro, by differentiation of induced pluripotent stem cells bearing a dystrophin mutation, and from wild type control cells.

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