Erin R. Ochoa, Assistant Professor
MD, Emory University School of Medicine, 1996
Email: ochoaer@upmc.edu
Research Interest:
- Liver senescence, regeneration and proliferation
- Telomerase controlled hepatic growth and regulation
- Growth factors and receptors in hepatocytes
Liver-directed gene therapy has the potential to treat a variety of hepatic and systemic diseases. Both transposons and retroviral vectors are a promising tool for in vivo gene delivery because of the ability to stably express therapeutic genes as well as infect resting cells. Telomere shortening results in cellular senescence. Telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) not only plays a role in maintaining telomere length, but also has been shown to promote proliferation of resting cells. Sleeping Beauty transposon and lentiviral vectors with an albumin promoter and an enhancer are promising tools for in vivo gene delivery restricted to hepatocytes. Overexpression of TERT in primary hepatocytes using these delivery vehicles may enhance proliferation and decrease cellular senescence in primary hepatocytes. Such transduced cells would then be useful for a variety of studies including hepatocyte transplantation, ex vivo therapy and tissue engineering.
Recent Publication
Rubin EM, Martin AA, Thung SN, Gerber MA: Morphometric and immunohistochemical characterization of human liver regeneration. American Journal of Pathology 147(2):397-404, 1995.
Ogawa K, Ochoa ER, Borenstein J, Tanaka K, Vacanti JP. The generation of functionally differentiated, three-dimensional hepatic tissue from two-dimensional sheets of progenitor small hepatocytes and non-parenchymal cells. Transplantation 77(12):1783-1789, 2004.
Ochoa ER, Vacanti JP. Developing a core platform for the tissue engineering of vital organs.Transplantation Reviews;15(4):184-99, 2001.
Ochoa ER, Vacanti JP. An overview of the pathology and approaches to tissue engineering. Annuals of the New York Academy of Sciences 979:10-26, 2002.
