NEWS
2023
September 2023 - The Kuo Lab is the recipient of an Arc Institute Ignite Award to collaborate with the Arc Institute and develop novel organoid technologies. (Announcement on Twitter and on Arc Institute site)
June 2023 - Research Scientist Jie Ding leads a study published in Nature Communications describing a Frizzled-4 specific Wnt-surrogate that can strengthen blood-brain barrier integrity during experimental stroke and enhance blood-retinal barrier properties, in collaboration with Surrozen Inc., Andrea Califano, and Douglas Vollrath. (Nature Communications LINK)
June 2023 - Postdoctoral Fellow Kasper Karlsson (joint Postdoc with Christina Curtis) publishes in Nature a collaboration with the Curtis lab describing tumor genomic evolution and clonal competition following TP53 mutation in human gastric organoids (Nature LINK)
Postdoctoral fellow Ken Sutha is awarded an NIDDK K08 award for his work with kidney organoids
Postdoctoral fellow Cara Rada is awarded an AHA Postdoctoral Fellowship
Undergraduate Researcher Karla Manzanares is accepted to the MIT Bioengineering PhD program
Research technician Samira Alwahabi is off to medical school
Research technician José Cedano graduates from CSU Fullerton
Undergraduate Researcher Alex Guh-Siesel returns for a summer of research
2022
The lab is awarded a Cancer Grand Challenges grant, jointly administered by Cancer Research UK and the NIH NCI. We join team PROMINENT in the study of cancer promotion.
2021
July 2021 - Postdoctoral fellow Yuan-Hung Lo is awarded an NCI K99/R00 fellowship for his work on modeling cancer in organoids.
June 2021 - Postdoctoral fellow Yuan-Hung Lo along with pathology fellow Kevin Kolahi publish a report in Cancer Discovery demonstrating that CRISPR knockout of the ARID1A tumor suppressor gene in human gastric organoids elicits malignant transformation. Collaborating labs include Haian Fu, Andrea Califano, and Christina Curtis. (Cancer discovery LINK)
2020
December 2020 - Hematology/Oncology fellow Ameen Salahudeen and MD/PhD student Shannon Choi publish in Nature a new method for clonogenic organoid culture of distal lung alveolar and basal stem cells and define a TNFRSF12A+ subset of basal cells with enhanced progenitor activity. The alveolar and basal lung organoids are used for SARS-CoV-2 infection, defining club cells as a novel target cell type. Collaborating labs include Catherine Blish, Manuel Amieva and Tushar Desai at Stanford. (Nature LINK)
August 2020 - Graduate student Andrew Ha, and postdoctoral fellows Kanako Yuki and Antonio Santos collaborate with Chris Garcia’s lab to characterize Frizzled-selective bioengineered Wnt agonists. This demonstrates that Frizzled 5/8 agonism is selectively able to induce intestinal proliferation in combination with R-spondin, while a distinct subset of Frizzleds regulate liver zonation. (CELL STEM CELL LINK)
April 2020 - Zack Sellers, Instructor in Pediatrics (Gastroenterology) is awarded both an NIDDK K08 award and a Young Investigator Award from the North American Society For Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology & Nutrition (NASPGHAN).
2019
December 2019 - Postdoctoral fellow Ameen Salahudeen publishes in Cell Stem Cell a collaboration with the Matt Porteus lab on generation of nasal sinus organoids and high efficiency gene correction of CFTR mutations. Collaborators include MD/PhD student Shannon Choi and Instructor of Pediatrics Zack Sellers. (Cell Stem Cell LINK)
November 2019 - High school student Alex Guh-Siesel is named a national semifinalist in the Regeneron Science Talent Search.
October 2019 - Instructor of Pediatrics Ken Sutha is awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from ASN.
September 2019 - MD/PhD student Shannon Choi, co-founder of the Stanford Women Association of Physician Scientists (SWAPS), is awarded a grant to support SWAPS from the Stanford Diversity and Inclusion Fund. (SWAPS LINK)
February 2019 - Postdoctoral Fellow Vincent van Unen (joint with Mark Davis) awarded a Rubicon Fellowship from the Dutch Science Foundation (NWO).
2018
December 2018 - Postdoctoral Fellow J. T. Neal and Research Scientist Xingnan Li publish in Cell a method to grow patient-derived tumor organoids that preserve tumor-infiltrating immune cells en bloc with cancer cells and recapitulate immune checkpoint inhibition. Collaborators include 10X Genomics, Graduate Student Junjie Zhu and Postdoctoral Fellow Caitlin Grzeskowiak. (Cell LINK)
News coverage: Nature, Nature Reviews Cancer, EACR
November 2018 - Postdoctoral Fellow Kanako Yuki is awarded an American Heart Association Fellowship.
October 2018 - Research Associate Mario Vallon and Postdoctoral Fellows Kanako Yuki and Leo Chang publish in Cell Reports that RECK is a WNT7 receptor that facilitates RECK/GPR124/WNT7 cooperativity as relevant to blood-brain barrier regulation. (Cell Reports LINK)
March 2018 - Postdoctoral Fellow Kasper Karsson is awarded a fellowship from the Swedish Research Council.
2017
July 2017 - Postdoctoral fellow Kelley Yan publishes in Cell Stem Cell an NIH/NIDDK/NIAID Intestinal Stem Cell Consortium study on comparative RNA-seq of distinct intestinal stem cell populations. This demonstrates unexpected enteroendocrine features of Bmi1+ and Prox1+ intestinal stem cells. (Cell Stem Cell LINK)
May 2017 - The Kuo lab publishes two manuscripts in Nature with Chris Garcia's lab on Wnt pathway regulation of intestinal stem cells and liver zonation/proliferation. In one study, from lead author and Gastroenterology Fellow Kelley Yan, postdoctoral fellows Leo Chang and Amanda Mah, graduate student Luis Chia, and 10X Genomics, Wnt and Rspo ligands are shown to have distinct but cooperative roles on Lgr5+ intestinal stem cell regulation. In the other study, Leo Chang and Xingnan Li from the Kuo lab assisted the Garcia lab to characterize their artificial bioengineered Wnt surrogates and demonstrate regulation of liver biology.
News coverage: CIRM, Yahoo, Stanford
March 2017 - Postdoctoral fellow Leo Chang and MD/PhD student Michael Mancuso describe in the journal Nature Medicine how the endothelial receptor Gpr124 limits brain blood vessel leakage after stroke or brain tumors (Nature Medicine LINK). (F1000 Recommended LINK)
2016
April 2016 - Postdoctoral Fellow, Ameen Salahudeen, receives Fellowship from the A.P. Giannini Foundation and is named the ECOG Paul Carbone Fellowship Awardee.
March 2016 - Undergraduate Jeffrey Kwong receives Stanford University Sterling Prize.
January 2016 - Calvin Elected as AAAS Fellow and member of the American Academy of Physicians.
2015
August 2015 - Calvin named Maureen Lyles D'Ambrogio Professor of Medicine at Stanford Medical School.
March 2015 - Calvin named Vice Chair of the Department of Medicine at Stanford Medical School.
February 2015 - Summer student Steven Wang named as one of 40 finalists nationwide for Intel Science Talent Search.
January 2015 - Postdoctoral Fellow Junlei Chang receives American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellowship.
2014
July 2014 - Research Associate Xingnan Li, Oncology Fellow Lincoln Nadauld, and Postdoctoral Fellows Michael Cantrell, Paul Rack and JT Neal publish in Nature Medicine first in vitro onocgenic transformation of primary colon, stomach and pancreatic tissue to adenocarcinoma, exploiting organoid culture methods. They also use colon organoids to validate miR-483 as a novel colon cancer oncogene (Nature Medicine LINK, PODCAST).
News Coverage: STANFORD, NCI
2013
October 2013 - MD/PhD students Kevin Wei and Lisa McGinnis and postdoctoral fellow Stephanie Piecewicz in collaboration with Amato Giaccias lab publish back-to-back letters in Nature Medicine describing that hypoxia/HIF2 signaling sensitizes liver insulin signaling by inducing hepatic expression of IRS2. These studies also show that VEGF inhibition induces the HIF2/IRS2 pathway and in fact that either VEGF inhibition or HIF2 activation effective treats mouse models of diabetes. (Nature Medicine LINK 1 LINK 2).
News Coverage: SCIENCE SIGNALING EDITOR'S CHOICE, US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, STANFORD
May 2013 - Oncology Fellow Lincoln Nadauld receives NIH K08 Award from NCI and also a ASCO Young Investigator Award.
2012
June 2012 - Gastroenterology Fellow Kelley Yan receives NIH K08 Award from NIDDK and Burroughs Wellcome Foundation Career Award for Medical Scientists.
June 2012 - Calvin named Co-lead of the Cancer Biology Program at the Stanford Cancer Center.