Regenerative Medicine

Recent news:

Healy Lab startup receives LSEC Venture Grant

October 15, 2024

MuscleMatrix and their hydrogel scaffold for muscle loss injuries is part of LSEC’s 2nd cohort of Venture Grant startups.

Conboy photo

The booming business of discovering your biological age

February 1, 2024

Professor Irina Conboy and former student Alina Su have founded a new company, Generation Lab, offering an at-home molecular aging test that analyzes a person’s biological age by assessing “biological noise” in their system. The test evaluates an individual’s risk for top health conditions and the pace of aging across 19 systems in the body, which can help physicians see where interventions may be most needed and effective.

Photo of person with hand on stomach, drawing of digestive system superimposed on top. Image by iStock.

Researchers make advances toward more effective IBD therapies

February 1, 2024

Researchers in Professor Phillip Messersmith’s lab have demonstrated that treatment with DPCA, an enzyme inhibitor molecule shown to trigger regeneration in mammals, can protect against and repair colon damage in a mouse model of colitis. This work suggests that short-term use of this small molecule drug could someday provide a restorative therapy for patients with IBD — and a path to remission.

How scientists aim to extend human lifespans

September 28, 2023

Professor Irina and Mike Conboy were guests on the Economist “Babbage” science and technology podcast dicussing progress in research on aging.

cover of Aging journal 9/15/23

Conboy Lab changes the measurement of biological age

September 15, 2023

Research from Professor Irina Conboy’s lab is on the cover of the journal “Aging” this week, highlighting their exciting new research in the measurement of biological age. Their work shows that commonly-used Elastic Net DNA methylation clocks have low accuracy, and present an alternative using noise-detecting cytosines, measuring the pressure of aging and disease on an organism. BioE PhD student Xiaoyue Mei and undergraduate alumnus Joshua Blanchard are first authors.

Old plasma dilution reduces human biological age

August 30, 2022

New work from Irina Conboy’s lab extends to humans their previous animal studies on age-specific differences in blood plasma, and establishes a novel direct measurement of biological age. Their results continue to demonstrate that aging may be driven by an excess of certain molecules and proteins, and point to potential treatments for age-related conditions.

drawing of serums in petri dish

Transfusing blood from an old mouse to a younger mouse causes ageing

August 8, 2022

New research from the Conboy Lab, highlighted in New Scientist magazine, has demonstrated that transfusing young mice with blood from older rodents quickly triggers ageing in the young, suggesting that cellular ageing isn’t just a case of wear and tear. This is one step closer to potential anti-ageing treatments and builds on years of aging research from Professor Irina Conboy.

drawing of cell stiffness mechanism

Kumar and Schaffer discover how biomaterials regulate stem cell neurogenesis in 3D

April 18, 2022

Engineered biomaterials are increasingly used to expand and differentiate stem cells for technological and therapeutic applications. A major open question in the field is how the mechanical properties of material scaffolds regulate stem cell differentiation, especially in complex 3D geometries like those found in tissue. In a collaborative study published in Science Advances, the labs of Sanjay Kumar and David Schaffer have discovered a 3D-specific molecular mechanism through which mechanical inputs act through the transcription factor Egr1 to determine how efficiently neural stem cells turn into neurons.

Conboy photo

The Science of Antiaging

September 27, 2021

UC Berkeley’s Irina Conboy, Ph.D., is unlocking the keys to healthy longevity
Diablo Magazine features the Conboy Lab’s research on the aging process, and ways to reverse it.