Email

hongranw@bcm.edu

Positions

Instructor in Surgery

Division of Surgical Research
Baylor College of Medicine

Instructor

Molecular and Cellular Biology
Baylor College of Medicine

Addresses

Alkek Building for Biomedical Research (Lab)

One Baylor Plaza
Houston, TX 77030
United States

Education

M.S. from Jilin Medical College

Jilin, Jilin China

M.D. from Jilin Medical College

Jilin, Jilin China

Ph.D. from Dalian University of Technology

Liaoning, Dalian China

Professional Interests

• Germ cell nuclear factor (GCNF)
• Cellular reprogramming

Professional Statement

Dr. Hongran Wang focuses his research efforts on germ cell nuclear factor (GCNF), an orphan nuclear receptor function in regulating the pluripotent genes in ES cells, embryonic development and iPS cells. We showed that pluripotent genes like Oct4 have GCNF response element in their promoters that are targets of GCNF, which inhibits these genes in mouse ES cell, human ES cell and iPS cells during differentiation. Losing GCNF leads to the defect in differentiation of ES cells, Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) and defect in the gene expression of three germ lines. GCNF also affect the microRNA expression during the differentiation of ES cell into neural cells and then affect the neural cell maturation and differentiation. Dr. Wang is also interested in cell therapy using reprogramming technology in degenerative diseases or/and repair injured organs and tissues, for examples: myocardial infarct, heart failure, neural degenerative diseases. We have established the technology platform of obtaining the functional cardiomyocytes from iPS cells, and are working on transdifferentiation of fibroblast into cardiomyocytes. iPS cells not only can be derived directly from healthy adult cells, but also can be made in a patient-matched manner. These individual pluripotent stem cell line that provides an unlimited supplies of autologous cells could be used to generate transplants without the risk of immune rejection. iPS cells will also being used in personalized drug discovery efforts and understanding the patient-specific basis of disease.

Websites

Selected Publications

• 3. Wang H., Wang X., Xu X., Zwaka T., and Cooney AJ "Epigenetic re-programming of the Germ Cell Nuclear Factor gene is required for proper differentiation of induced pluripotent cells." Stem Cells. 2013;31:2659-2666.
• 4. Tennakoon JB., Wang H., Coarfa C., Milosavljevic A., Cooney AJ. Gunaratne PH "Loss of Dicer results in a shift in transcriptionally favorable and unfavorable histone marks to influence genes in embryonic stem cells." Plos One. 2013;8(9):e74556.
• 5. Deng JM., Satoh K., Wang H., Chang H., Zhang Z., Stewart MD., Cooney AJ. and Behringer RR "Generation of Viable Male and Female Mice from Two Fathers." Biol Rrprod. 2011;83:613–618.
• 6. Wang H., Zheng R, Xu Y., Lian L., An L. and Chen D "Embryonic stem cell as nuclear donor could promote in vitro development of the heterogeneous reconstructed embryo." Chinese Science Bulletin. 2002;47(21):1811-1815.