Megan Ealy

by Megan Ealy a Post Doc in the Heller Lab

As we approach the end of another year, it is a good time to reflect on the progress I’ve made in the lab. My work continues on understanding how we can develop cells of the inner ear from human stem cells. This is a project I have been working on since joining the lab in 2012. And while it has been a slow, meticulous process, I feel we are starting to get a handle on how to get to the early progenitor cell stage of inner ear development. I am currently working on characterizing cells generated from human embryonic stem cells that express genes we know are present in the precursor to the inner ear. This work relies on other work performed by other post-docs in my lab, Andres Plata Stapper and Robert Durruthy-Durruthy, who are characterizing, in great detail, the developing mouse inner ear. Together we hope to test just how closely the human induced cells relate to those we know give rise to the sensory cells of the mouse.

I’ve been fortunate to share and discuss this work with many other researchers and get valuable feedback over the last year. I was fortunate to have a chance to present at the Inner Ear Biology Workshop held last November in Kyoto, Japan. This was my first trip to Japan, and I can’t wait to get a chance to go back – such a beautiful country! We have also had regular video conferences with members of our Otostem Consortium partners. Along with numerous opportunities to present at Stanford events, it has been a wonderful experience to get great advice to push this research forward.

And as this year draws to a close, looking at the progress that has been made, there is still much to learn. I look forward to the new and exciting discoveries to be made in 2016.