Wa Xian, PhD, was recently awarded this year's Medtronic Research and Development Pilot Award in Technology by the American Gastroenterological Association. She is an assistant professor at the Houston-based University of Texas Health Science Center's Center for Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine.
Here's what you need to know:
1. This award provides Dr. Xian with funding from the AGA Research Foundation. The funds will go towards her lab's development of new technology that captures ground state stem cells.
2. Dr. Xian's research uses stem cells to study inflammatory bowel disease. Her research involves cloning ground state stem cells from endoscopic biopsies of IBD patients, to collect patient-specific stem cells.
3. Through analyzing these stem cells, she hopes to provide insight into genome expression profiles and pathways associated with the disease. This knowledge can then be incorporated into new IBD therapies.
4. "As an assistant professor and basic stem cell scientist, this award represents my first funding support towards the very dynamic and important problem of inflammatory bowel diseases," she said in an AGA news release.