Kevin Eggan is a developmental biologist at the forefront of addressing fundamental questions about cellular differentiation and plasticity; in addition to their importance to basic biology, these questions hold essential implications for developing therapeutic stem cell lines from adult cell nuclei. His research explores the mechanisms by which somatic cell nuclear transfer can reverse the differentiation of a cell by “reprogramming” its nucleus to the totipotent state. His accomplishments place him at the forefront of a most exciting new branch of biology: the use of nuclear transfer and stem cell technologies to explore mammalian development, i.e., how a single cell grows into a complex organism. More recently, he showed that nuclei of even highly specialized cells, such as olfactory neurons which express only a single odorant receptor, retain full developmental potential.
By exploring the possibilities of redirecting stem cells from adult tissue or differentiated tissue, Eggan is moving us an important step closer to developing therapeutic applications for diseases such as Parkinson’s and insulin-dependent diabetes, as well as providing an experimental platform for investigating the genetic and environmental factors that give rise to such diseases.
Harvard Molecular & Cell Biology – Faculty & Research – Kevin Eggan