Asuka Eguchi presents at the M&I Wednesday Seminar series
Instructor Asuka Eguchi, PhD
Asuka Eguchi, an Instructor in the Blau Lab, presented her work during the April 26, 2023 Department of Microbiology Seminar Series. This series highlights the work of department trainees, instructors, staff, and faculty. Her talk was entitled Gene Therapy Strategies to Address Heart Failure in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophin lack expression of the protein dystrophin and die of dilated cardiomyopathy in the second or third decade of life. Her work investigates whether gene therapy strategies to deliver full-length dystrophin can prevent the pathogenic progression of diseased cardiomyocytes. This innovative platform capitalizes on bioengineered hydrogels and patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells to assess gene therapy strategies that address the root cause of the disease.