Areas of Interest
Hair Cell and Supporting Cell Regeneration. Main focus of the lab is regeneration of sensory hair and supporting cells in vertebrates. As hair cells in vertebrates do not regenerate spontaneously there are different strategies to overcome hearing loss at a cellular level. The lab has experience in drug based approaches directly manipulating target gene transcription or interfering with epigenetic regulation of target genes. Alternatively, we employed stem cell based approaches using tissue specific stem cells and induced or embryonic pluripotent stem cells to generate hair cell like cells.
Development of the Organ of Corti. Development of rational treatment strategies to overcome hearing loss relies on our understanding of how the organ of Corti forms during embryogenesis. Our lab uses single cell transcriptomics and flow sorting to investigate developmental processes at high resolution and the results are considered as the basis for our future research strategies.