凯文-埃根 发育生物学家

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凯文-埃根
发育生物学家 | 2006级
探究有关细胞分化和可塑性的基本问题，并向治疗各种人类疾病的干细胞应用迈进了重要一步。

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标题
发育生物学家
工作单位
哈佛大学
工作地点
马萨诸塞州剑桥市
年龄
获奖时32岁
重点领域
细胞、发育和系统生物学
发表于2006年9月1日
关于凯文的工作
凯文-埃根（Kevin Eggan）是一名发育生物学家，处于解决有关细胞分化和可塑性的基本问题的最前沿；除了对基础生物学的重要性外，这些问题对从成人细胞核开发治疗性干细胞系具有重要意义。他的研究探索了体细胞核移植（克隆）通过 "重新编程 "其细胞核来逆转细胞分化的机制，以达到全能状态。他的成就使他处于生物学一个最令人兴奋的新分支的前沿：使用核转移和干细胞技术来探索哺乳动物的发育，即一个单细胞如何成长为一个复杂的生物体。在一项关于克隆小鼠胚胎中X染色体失活的重要研究中，埃根证明了核移植程序会导致供体基因组的表观遗传学重编程。最近，他表明，即使是高度专业化的细胞，如只表达单一气味受体的嗅觉神经元，其细胞核也能保留全部发育潜力。经过独立的人类主体和伦理委员会的仔细审查，埃根于2006年6月获得许可，在哈佛大学开始努力从患有几种衰弱或绝症的病人的皮肤细胞中创建胚胎干细胞系。通过探索从成人组织或分化组织重定向干细胞的可能性，埃根正在使我们向开发帕金森症和胰岛素依赖型糖尿病等疾病的治疗应用迈进重要的一步，同时也为研究引起此类疾病的遗传和环境因素提供了一个实验平台。

个人简历
凯文-埃根在伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校获得微生物学学士学位（1996年），并在麻省理工学院获得生物学博士学位（2003年）。在2005年加入哈佛大学分子和细胞生物学系担任助理教授之前，他曾是怀特海生物医学研究所的博士后研究员（2002-2003），并从2003年开始成为哈佛大学研究员协会的初级研究员。2006年，他还被任命为斯托沃斯医学研究所的助理调查员。



Kevin Eggan
Developmental Biologist | Class of 2006
Probing fundamental questions about cellular differentiation and plasticity and moving an important step closer to therapeutic stem cell applications for myriad human diseases.

Portrait of Kevin Eggan
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Title
Developmental Biologist
Affiliation
Harvard University
Location
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Age
32 at time of award
Area of Focus
Cell, Developmental, and Systems Biology
Published September 1, 2006
ABOUT KEVIN'S WORK
Kevin Eggan is a developmental biologist at the forefront of addressing fundamental questions about cellular differentiation and plasticity; in addition to their importance to basic biology, these questions hold essential implications for developing therapeutic stem cell lines from adult cell nuclei. His research explores the mechanisms by which somatic cell nuclear transfer (cloning) can reverse the differentiation of a cell by “reprogramming” its nucleus to the totipotent state. His accomplishments place him at the forefront of a most exciting new branch of biology: the use of nuclear transfer and stem cell technologies to explore mammalian development, i.e., how a single cell grows into a complex organism. In an important study of X chromosome inactivation in cloned mouse embryos, Eggan demonstrated that the nuclear transfer procedure leads to epigenetic reprogramming of the donor genome. More recently, he showed that nuclei of even highly specialized cells, such as olfactory neurons which express only a single odorant receptor, retain full developmental potential. After careful review by independent human subjects and ethics panels, Eggan received permission in June 2006 to initiate efforts at Harvard to create embryonic stem cell lines from skin cells of patients suffering from several debilitating or terminal diseases. By exploring the possibilities of redirecting stem cells from adult tissue or differentiated tissue, Eggan is moving us an important step closer to developing therapeutic applications for diseases such as Parkinson’s and insulin-dependent diabetes, as well as providing an experimental platform for investigating the genetic and environmental factors that give rise to such diseases.

BIOGRAPHY
Kevin Eggan received a B.S. (1996) in microbiology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and a Ph.D. (2003) in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research (2002-2003) and a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows beginning 2003, prior to joining Harvard University’s Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology as an assistant professor in 2005. In 2006, he was also named an assistant investigator of the Stowers Medical Institute.