The Gubbels Laboratory
Faculty Samuel P. Gubbels
Samuel P. Gubbels
Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery, Division of Otolaryngology
Organ System/Disease Focus
Inner ear, Hearing loss
Aligned Research Focus
Regenerative medicine for hearing loss, Hair cell regeneration, Inner ear stem cell transplantation
Research Description
The focus of Dr. Gubbels’ research is on the pursuit of novel strategies to study and regenerate hair cells of the inner ear in hopes of ultimately restoring hearing. Specifically, he is interested in using a variety of multipotent stem cell types to model the development, disease and regeneration of inner ear hair cells in vitro, including neural progenitor cells, embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells. In collaboration with the laboratory of Dr. Clive Svendsen, he has initiated a study designed to guide differentiation of multipotent precursor cells into inner ear hair cells in large numbers. Lessons learned from this study may provide a means to produce inner ear cell types from pluripotent cells in numbers sufficient to realistically pursue novel methods of disease modeling and cell-based therapies for hearing loss. Furthermore, Dr. Gubbels is interested in the use of a novel, in utero investigational technique to define critical cellular mechanisms present during inner ear development and to explore the ability of the developing mouse otocyst to direct the integration of endogenously and exogenously generated hair cells into the highly-patterned cellular architecture of the organ of Corti, the sensory organ of the cochlea.
Selected References
Gubbels SP, Woessner DW, Mitchell JC, Ricci AJ, Brigande JV. Functional auditory hair cells produced in the mammalian cochlea by in utero gene transfer. Nature, September 25, 2008; 455(7212): 537-542.
Brigande JV, Gubbels SP, Woessner DW, Jungwirth J, Bresee CS. Electroporation-Mediated Gene Transfer to the Developing Mammalian Inner Ear. Methods in Molecular Biology, 2009; 493:125-139.
Hildebrand MS, Newton SS, Gubbels SP, Sheffield AM, KocharA, de Silva MG, Dahl HH, Rose SD, Behlke MA, Smith RJ. Advances in Molecular and Cellular Therapies for Hearing Loss. Molecular Therapy, February 08; 16(2), 224-236.