Diego Fraidenraich, Ph.D.

Research

The focus of my lab is to design paradigms for embryonic stem (ES) and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell based repair of cardiac and skeletal muscle defects using mouse models of human disease (thin myocardial syndrome, cardiomyopathy, muscular dystrophy). To this end, we reprogram WT and mutant iPS cells. These cells are coaxed into becoming cardiac myocytes, or simply injected into mutant blastocysts to study disease correction in the resultant mosaic mice. The ultimate goal is to identify cardiotrophic and myotrophic factors with rescue potential.