David L. Mack, PhD
| Title: | Associate Professor |
|---|---|
| Division: | Research |
Pronouns: he/him/his
Dr. David Mack is an associate professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine and Bioengineering, as well as an investigator in the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Washington. He has a longstanding interest in how stem cells make cell fate decisions during embryonic development by coordinating their intrinsic genetic program with cues from their surrounding microenvironment. The goal of the Mack laboratory is to apply their understanding of this basic question to the development of stem cell and gene therapy treatments for neuromuscular diseases.
Dr. Mack’s expertise is rooted at the intersection of genetics, developmental biology, cancer biology and biomaterials, which resulted directly from different phases of his professional training. The foundation is a PhD in molecular genetics from the Indiana University School of Medicine, where he studied transcriptional regulation of T-cell development and how this process goes awry to cause leukemia. As a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Gilbert Smith at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, he studied how tissue-specific stem cells interact with their microenvironment and how this impacts cell fate choices during mammary gland development and pregnancy. Dr. Mack then switched from cancer research to the relatively new field of regenerative medicine by accepting a senior postdoc position at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Under the leadership of Dr. Anthony Atala, his work focused on how to control embryonic and fetal stem cell differentiation by using natural and artificial scaffolds in concert with direct manipulation of the cells’ genetic program. All of these efforts have the overriding purpose of developing therapies to enhance tissue repair and regeneration following injury or disease.
Education and Training
- PhD, Molecular Genetics, Minor: Microbiology and Immunology, Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Wake Forest University Health Sciences, Winston-Salem, NC, 2009-2012
- PhD, Molecular Genetics, Minor: Microbiology and Immunology, Mammary Biology and Tumorigenesis Laboratory, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, 2004-2009
- PhD, Molecular Genetics, Minor: Microbiology and Immunology, Indiana University School of Medicine, Department of Medical & Molecular Genetics, Indianapolis, IN, 2005
- MA, Molecular Microbiology, Indiana University Department of Biology, Bloomington, IN, 1993
- BA, Biological Sciences, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, 1989
Notable Awards
- 2008: Director's Innovation Award Recipient for Career Development, National Institute of Health (NIH)
Research Interests
The Mack laboratory is part of the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine. The lab is focused on two primary areas: 1) Creation and testing of AAV-mediated gene transfer and CRISPR gene-editing strategies in small and large animal models and 2) Generation of induced pluripotent stem cell-based ‘disease-in-a-dish’ models starting from patient-derived and CRISPR-edited stem cells. We aim to recapitulate embryonic development in the dish to differentiate stem cells from normal volunteers and from patients harboring NMD-causing mutations into cardiac, skeletal muscle and motor neurons to track the earliest molecular events leading to disease.