Welcome to the Nolta Lab at the UC Davis Medical School!

Lab focus: Human stem cell-mediated repair of damaged tissues

    The new concept of “stem cell plasticity”, and the hope that stem cells can be used to repair damaged tissues, has generated immense excitement. We prefer to call this field, “stem cell-mediated tissue repair”, since the concept of cell fusion to explain some of the observed effects has been documented after damage in liver and muscle, both organs that contain a high number of multinucleate cells. Also, stem cells that lodge in or home to areas of hypoxic injury may release factors that enhance the repair of endogenous tissues and promote angiogenesis in ischemic areas. The field is an extremely exciting one, and many questions remain to be answered before stem cell therapy for tissue repair can be used effectively in the clinic. Our laboratory has developed in vivo models necessary to now answer specific questions regarding tissue repair by adult human stem cells. We are using these models to address three major questions in the field:

• What cell type can best mediate repair in liver, hindlimb ischemia, and cardiac muscle? Can one cell type do it all?
• Is repair occurring through fusion, differentiation of infused cells, or secretion of angiogenic factors by infused stem cells to initiate revascularization?
• How are stem cells recruited to injury sites? Can we enhance recruitment to induce more robust repair?

Specific areas of interest:

• Stem cell isolation strategies
• Immune deficient mouse models
• Injury models:
• CCL4-mediated liver injury
• LAD cardiac artery ligation
• Hindlimb ischemia
• Radiation induced injuries of multiple organs (lung, liver, muscle)
• Recruitment factors: SDF-1, HGF: One of the overall goals of our research is to optimize recruitment of defined human stem and progenitor populations to damaged liver and muscle in novel immune deficient mouse models of tissue injury, to obtain more robust repair.
• Clonal marking using retroviral and lentiviral vectors, to definitively identify cells of different tissue types that were generated from a common precursor.
• Scale-up for clinical trials: Our laboratory works in translational biology at the GLP,or “good laboratory practice” level, required to take gene therapy and tissue repair studies from the bench into the clinic. Dr. Nolta is Scientific Director of the GMP facility at UC Davis Medical School and assists other Principal Investigators with the rules and regulations involved with obtaining approvals from the Recombinant advisory committee (RAC) and the FDA for cellular therapies. She works closely with Dr. Gerhard Bauer, the Laboratory Director of the GMP Facility. Additional documents and protocols related to the GMP Facility are available with our other documents.

Jan Nolta BioSketch  | Gerhard Bauer BioSketch