Renjie Chai, PhD has been named as a recipient of an Emerging Research grant from the Hearing Health Foundation.

The grant is for his work on, “Characterization of Wnt-responsive progenitor cells in the mammalian cochlea”, which aims to:

Gain insights into the regenerative potential of the mammalian cochlear hair cells, with long term goal to improve the current treatment of hearing loss via hair cell regeneration. The Wnt signaling pathway has been found to play a crucial role in maintaining the stem cell population in several organ systems. Recently our laboratory has found a transient expression of active wnt signals in the mouse cochlea, and found 2 inner ear progenitor cell populations marked by two Wnt downstream target genes. This project has been designed to systematically investigate the role of the Wnt pathway in maintaining these two Wnt responsive progenitor cell populations.

The long term goal of this research is to treat sensorineural hearing loss with hair cell regeneration and cell-base therapy.

Dr. Chai received his PhD from Baylor University and is now a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Otolaryngology, where he works in the lab of Dr. Alan Cheng.

Congratulations Dr. Chai. We look forward to being able to report more about your research in the future.

.