Dr. Seongho Bae, a postdoctoral fellow in the Yoon Lab, received the postdoctoral fellowship in 2018 from the American Heart Association (AHA)

• Post by: Seongho Bae
• 1:11AM Oct 08, 2018
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The purpose of AHA postdoctoral fellowship is to enhance the training of postdoctoral applicants who are not yet independent. The applicant must be embedded in an appropriate investigative group with the mentorship, support, and relevant scientific guidance of a research mentor.

Research topic: Cardiac Repair by enhanced vascularization with ETV2

Ischemic heart disease is the most common cause of morbidity and mortality in the US. Despite advances in medical and surgical therapies, approximately 30% of the patients surviving myocardial infarction (MI) have suffered from heart failure. Many investigators have attempted to develop new, effective therapeutic approaches to improve infarcted heart function. Previously, Dr. Yoon’s group succeeded in generating functional endothelial cells from human dermal fibroblasts with ETV2, and further reported the favorable effects of these reprogrammed endothelial cells (rECs) on vascular regeneration. In this study, we therefore aimed to investigate whether direct delivery of ETV2 can improve cardiac function following MI, because increased vessel formation is known to be critical for salvaging impending and ongoing myocardial damage following MI. Overall, our central hypothesis is that ETV2 could enhance vessel formation by inducing angiogenesis and reprogramming cardiac fibroblasts into endothelial cells and improve cardiac function following ischemic injury.