Professor Atsushi Asakura PhD

This laboratory’s goals include attempting to understand the molecular mechanisms controlling muscle satellite cell (muscle stem cell) self-renewal and differentiation, and to develop novel therapeutic methods for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). This also involves the stem cell niche associated with vasculature in normal and regenerating skeletal muscle. The lab has recently begun exploration of cell based therapy with induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSCs) toward muscular dystrophy model animals and heart infarction models. They use MSI resources for genome-wide RNA-seq analysis and ChIP-Seq analysis, which allow them to study characteristics of stem cells.