Author: Layla Rouse, MS

Matthew Ishahak, PhD, Washington University in St. Louis

Dr. Ishahak received his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Miami and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. His research focuses on developing in vitro models of human diseases using engineered organoids and applying state-of-the-art sequencing technologies to investigate mechanisms of disease progression. 

Dr. Wang is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering at Mayo Clinic in Arizona. His research focuses on creating novel models to study diabetes and metabolism and to identify therapeutic targets in metabolic diseases. Specifically, Dr. Wang studies the fundamental transcriptional and epigenetic dysregulation of beta cells that drives the pathogenesis of diabetes.

Project: “Inferring and Perturbing Gene Regulatory Networks During Diabetes Progression”

Summary: 
The goal of this project is to improve our understanding of how diabetes disrupts gene regulatory networks in pancreatic islets. By integrating single cell transcriptomic and chromatin accessibility data from healthy and diabetic patients, we will be able to define cell-state-specific gene regulatory networks for each pancreatic islet cell type and perform simulated genetic perturbation experiments to uncover transcription factors that drive diabetes progression. This work will result in new computational approaches utilizing patient data to elucidate the pathogenesis of islet dysfunction in diabetes. 

Dr. Ishahak will be joining the Pancreas Knowledgebase Program (PanKbase).

Project:  “Multi-omics Integrative Analyses of Human Islets in Type 1 Diabetes”

Summary:
This project aims to identify type 1 diabetes-associated SNPs within cell type specific chromatin regions of human islet cells. By integrating GWAS with scATAC-seq, scRNA-seq, and single-cell multiomic data, and applying computational approaches such as transcription factor motif analysis and chromatin footprinting, we will uncover functionally relevant variants that alter transcriptional regulation. These findings will provide new insights into the cis-regulatory architecture of islet cells and reveal mechanisms by which noncoding variants contribute to T1D pathogenesis.

Dr. Wang will be joining the Consortium on Beta Cell Death and Survival (CBDS).