The Bruno Lab

While the current research projects being explored in my laboratory are diverse, they all focus on the broad question of how clonal populations of cells give rise to and maintain
phenotypically heterogeneous populations within tissues and tumors. In other words, how do
stem and progenitor cells maintain symmetric and asymmetric divisions, self-renew, and give
rise to cells with specific differentiation programs? These questions are important not only for
our understanding of basic tissue and stem cell biology, but also in the translational fields of
cancer biology, aging, and regenerative medicine. My work utilizes both the mouse mammary gland and human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) systems as experiment models for stem/progenitor function and analyzes both extrinsic factors (the niche) and intrinsic factors (asymmetric DNA segregation) to study these questions.