Dawn M. Delo, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Tengion, Inc.
Winston-Salem, NC

Email: dawn.delo@tengion.com

Education:

Ph.D., Molecular Medicine, 2003-2008

Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC

B.S., Biochemistry, 1999 - 2003
Eckerd College, Saint Petersburg, FL

Research Interests:

More than 2,600 Americans die of cardiovascular disease each day, an average of 1 death every 33 seconds. After an acute myocardial infarction, reperfusion may be established as a means to salvage functional myocardial tissue. However, many times, even after reperfusion, the myocardium has often times suffered an extreme injury and cannot be regenerated. Cell therapy has been proposed as a means to promote the regeneration of injured heart muscle. Lines of broad spectrum multipotent stem cells derived from primitive fetal cells present in human and mouse amniotic fluid (AFS) cells have been established. AFS cells offer several advantages: They are easy to isolate and grow (no feeder layers needed), are highly expansive including clonal growth and they can differentiate into all germ layers (see reference De Coppi et al. Nat Biotech 2007;25(1):100-6).  Despite these obvious scientific and clinical advantages, the cardiac lineage in vitro and in vivo has not been fully investigated. The goals of my research are to investigate this novel source of stem cells and the cardiac lineage, and the potential for the regeneration of injured myocardium from this novel source of stem cells. In this study, we hypothesize that AFS cells can differentiate into cardiac muscle cells and be used for cardiac tissue regeneration.

Publications:

Koh CJ, Delo DM, Lee JW, Siddiqui MM, Lanza RP, Soker S, Yoo JJ, Atala A. Parthenogenesis-derived multipotent stem cells adapted for tissue engineering applications. Methods. 2009 Feb;47(2):90-7.

Delo, DM.,  Eberli, D. Williams, J. Andersson, K.E., Atala, A., Soker S., The Effects of Using Angiogenic Gene Modified Skeletal Muscle Cells to Compensate for Aging-induced Changes in Bioengineered Functional Muscle Tissue. BJU Int. 2008 Sep;102(7):878-84. Epub 2008 May 16.

Delo, DM., Olson, J., Baptista, P., Zhu, JM., Soker, S. Non-Invasive Longitudinal Tracking of Human Amniotic Fluid Stem Cells in Mouse Heart. Stem Cells Dev. 2008 Dec; 17(6): 1185-94.

Delo, DM., Baptista, P., Soker, S., Atala, A. Amniotic Fluid Pluripotent Stem Cells; Cell Therapy 1^st Edition, Book Chapter, 2008

Halum, SL., Naidu, M., Delo, DM, Atala, A.,Hingtgen, C. Injection of Autologous Muscle Stem Cells (Myoblasts) for the Treatment of Vocal Fold Paralysis; Laryngoscope, May; 117(5): 917-22

For a listing of additional publications, refer to PubMed, a service provided by the National Library of Medicine.

Grants:

2006-2008     National Institutes of Health Ruth L. Kirschstein National
Research Service Award (NRSA) Research Training Fellowship (F31)

2006             Sigma Xi Scientific Society Grant