Sadhan Das, Ph.D.

Das Lab will focus on diabetes wound healing a type of diabetic complication. Diabetes wound healing is highly prevalent in our community and a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Impaired wound healing due to diabetes can lead to chronic wounds and amputation of the foot. Furthermore, currently available drugs for these disorders are not fully efficacious in many patients. Macrophage dysfunction is an important feature of diabetic wound healing characterized by altered M1 and M2 populations through the action of TNF-α and TGF-β1 respectively. Although biochemical mechanisms involved in diabetic wound healing have been studied, contributing epigenetic mechanisms are not well known. We will investigate the functional roles of enhancers/SEs and lncRNAs in diabetic wound healing-associated gene expression and phenotypes in macrophages. We will use experimental as well as computational methods to address those questions. The ultimate goal is to uncover enhancer/SE and lncRNA-dependent mechanisms for TNF-α and TGF-β1 actions in monocytes and macrophages that can lead to identification of new therapeutic targets for diabetic wound healing.

Das lab is also collaborating with Dr. Rama Natarajan’s lab in the area of diabetes-induced phenotypic switching of vascular smooth muscle cells and its implications in Cardiovascular disease by utilizing state-of-the-art multi-omic approaches including single-cell transcriptomic and epigenomic analyses.