BBS Faculty Member - Chad Cowan

Chad Cowan

Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology

Harvard University
Sherman Fairchild Building, Room 153
7 Divinity Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617-496-5222
Fax: 617-496-8351
Email: ccowan1@partners.org

Our goal is to understand how naturally occurring human genetic variation protects (or predisposes) some people to cardiovascular and metabolic disease—the leading cause of death in the world—and to use that information to develop therapies that can protect the entire population from disease. Our strategy is to identify patients, families, and cohorts with disease; to use genetic techniques such as genome-wide association studies and exome sequencing to identify novel DNA variants and genes linked to disease; to use human cell-based models and mouse models to understand how the DNA variants affect gene and protein function; and to use these mechanistic insights to begin the process of developing new therapies that will benefit patients and populations. In particular, we are interested in using human pluripotent stem cells to create human-derived tissues, containing specific DNA variants, as genetic disease models in which environmental and epigenetic influences have been minimized. We also aim to use stem cells to enable regenerative medicine, in which a patient’s own cells can be genetically cured or made resistant to disease and then transplanted back into the body as a durable treatment.

Last Update: 8/21/2013

Publications

For a complete listing of publications click here.

From noncoding variant to phenotype via SORT1 at the 1p13 cholesterol locus. Musunuru K, Strong A, Frank-Kamenetsky M, Lee NE, Ahfeldt T, Sachs KV, Li X, Li H, Kuperwasser N, Ruda VM, Pirruccello JP, Muchmore B, Prokunina-Olsson L, Hall JL, Schadt EE, Morales CR, Lund-Katz S, Phillips MC, Wong J, Cantley W, Racie T, Ejebe KG, Orho-Melander M, Melander O, Koteliansky V, Fitzgerald K, Krauss RM, Cowan CA, Kathiresan S, Rader DJ. Nature. 2010 Aug 5;466(7307):714-9. PMCID: PMC3062476

Rapid cellular turnover in adipose tissue. Rigamonti A, Brennand K, Lau F, Cowan CA. PLoS One. 2011 Mar 2;6(3):e17637. PMCID: PMC3047582.

Programming human pluripotent stem cells into white and brown adipocytes. Ahfeldt T, Schinzel RT, Lee YK, Hendrickson D, Kaplan A, Lum DH, Camahort R, Xia F, Shay J, Rhee EP, Clish CB, Deo RC, Shen T, Lau FH, Cowley A, Mowrer G, Al-Siddiqi H, Nahrendorf M, Musunuru K, Gerszten RE, Rinn JL, Cowan CA. Nat Cell Biol. 2012 Jan 15. doi: 10.1038/ncb2411. PMCID: PMC3385947

Generation of Multipotent Lung and Airway Progenitors from Mouse ESCs and Patient-Specific Cystic Fibrosis iPSCs. Mou, H., Zhao, R., Sherwood, R., Ahfeldt, T., Lapey, A., Wain, J., Sicilian, L., Izvolsky, K., Musunuru, K., Cowan, C., and Rajagopal, J. (2012). Cell Stem Cell 10, 385–397