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Samira Musah

Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering
Biomedical Engineering

Selected Publications


A human stem cell-derived model reveals pathologic extracellular matrix remodeling in diabetic podocyte injury.

Journal Article Matrix biology plus · December 2024 Diabetic nephropathy results from chronic (or uncontrolled) hyperglycemia and is the leading cause of kidney failure. The kidney's glomerular podocytes are highly susceptible to diabetic injury and subsequent non-reversible degeneration. We generated a hum ... Full text Open Access Cite

Epigenetics of Hypertensive Nephropathy.

Journal Article Biomedicines · November 2024 Hypertensive nephropathy (HN) is a leading cause of chronic kidney disease (CKD) and end-stage renal disease (ESRD), contributing to significant morbidity, mortality, and rising healthcare costs. In this review article, we explore the role of epigenetic me ... Full text Open Access Cite

Mechanosensitive Differentiation of Human iPS Cell-Derived Podocytes.

Journal Article Bioengineering (Basel, Switzerland) · October 2024 Stem cell fate decisions, including proliferation, differentiation, morphological changes, and viability, are impacted by microenvironmental cues such as physical and biochemical signals. However, the specific impact of matrix elasticity on kidney cell dev ... Full text Open Access Cite

Engineered human iPS cell models reveal altered podocytogenesis and glomerular capillary wall in CHD-associated SMAD2 mutations.

Journal Article bioRxiv · August 6, 2024 Early developmental programming involves extensive cell lineage diversification through shared molecular signaling networks. Clinical observations of congenital heart disease (CHD) patients carrying SMAD2 genetic variants revealed correlations with multi-o ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Fenestrated Endothelial Cells across Organs: Insights into Kidney Function and Disease.

Journal Article International journal of molecular sciences · August 2024 In the human body, the vascular system plays an indispensable role in maintaining homeostasis by supplying oxygen and nutrients to cells and organs and facilitating the removal of metabolic waste and toxins. Blood vessels-the key constituents of the vascul ... Full text Open Access Cite

Kidney Disease Modeling with Organoids and Organs-on-Chips.

Journal Article Annual review of biomedical engineering · July 2024 Kidney disease is a global health crisis affecting more than 850 million people worldwide. In the United States, annual Medicare expenditures for kidney disease and organ failure exceed $81 billion. Efforts to develop targeted therapeutics are limited by a ... Full text Open Access Cite

An ultrathin membrane mediates tissue-specific morphogenesis and barrier function in a human kidney chip.

Journal Article Science advances · June 2024 Organ-on-chip (OOC) systems are revolutionizing tissue engineering by providing dynamic models of tissue structure, organ-level function, and disease phenotypes using human cells. However, nonbiological components of OOC devices often limit the recapitulat ... Full text Open Access Cite

Advancing drug discovery for glomerulopathies using stem-cell-derived kidney models.

Journal Article Trends in pharmacological sciences · April 2023 Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is an epidemic that affects millions worldwide. The glomerulus, a specialized unit of the nephron, is highly susceptible to injury. Human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have emerged as an attractive resource for modelin ... Full text Open Access Cite

Next Generation Glomerulus-on-a-chip For Disease Modeling

Conference TISSUE ENGINEERING PART A · 2023 Cite

Adriamycin-Induced Podocyte Injury Disrupts the YAP-TEAD1 Axis and Downregulates Cyr61 and CTGF Expression.

Journal Article ACS chemical biology · December 2022 The most severe forms of kidney diseases are often associated with irreversible damage to the glomerular podocytes, the highly specialized epithelial cells that encase glomerular capillaries and regulate the removal of toxins and waste from the blood. Seve ... Full text Open Access Cite

Organoids as tools for fundamental discovery and translation-a Keystone Symposia report.

Journal Article Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · December 2022 Complex three-dimensional in vitro organ-like models, or organoids, offer a unique biological tool with distinct advantages over two-dimensional cell culture systems, which can be too simplistic, and animal models, which can be too complex and may fail to ... Full text Open Access Cite

Isogenic Kidney Glomerulus Chip Engineered from Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells.

Journal Article Journal of visualized experiments : JoVE · November 2022 Chronic kidney disease (CKD) affects 15% of the U.S. adult population, but the establishment of targeted therapies has been limited by the lack of functional models that can accurately predict human biological responses and nephrotoxicity. Advancements in ... Full text Open Access Cite

A Biomimetic Electrospun Membrane Supports the Differentiation and Maturation of Kidney Epithelium from Human Stem Cells.

Journal Article Bioengineering (Basel, Switzerland) · April 2022 Podocytes derived from human induced pluripotent stem (hiPS) cells are enabling studies of kidney development and disease. However, many of these studies are carried out in traditional tissue culture plates that do not accurately recapitulate the molecular ... Full text Cite

Microfluidic systems for modeling human development.

Journal Article Development (Cambridge, England) · February 2022 The proper development and patterning of organs rely on concerted signaling events emanating from intracellular and extracellular molecular and biophysical cues. The ability to model and understand how these microenvironmental factors contribute to cell fa ... Full text Cite

SARS-CoV-2 Employ BSG/CD147 and ACE2 Receptors to Directly Infect Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Kidney Podocytes.

Journal Article Front Cell Dev Biol · 2022 Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which has resulted in over 5.9 million deaths worldwide. While cells in the respiratory system are the initial target of SARS-CoV-2, there is mount ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Translating Organoids into Artificial Kidneys.

Journal Article Current transplantation reports · January 2022 Purpose of reviewKidney disease affects more than 13% of the world population, and current treatment options are limited to dialysis and organ transplantation. The generation of kidney organoids from human-induced pluripotent stem (hiPS) cells cou ... Full text Open Access Cite

BSG/CD147 and ACE2 receptors facilitate SARS-CoV-2 infection of human iPS cell-derived kidney podocytes.

Journal Article bioRxiv · November 17, 2021 BACKGROUND: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) in March 2020. The disease has caused more than 5.1 million deaths ... Full text Link to item Cite

Uncovering SARS-CoV-2 kidney tropism.

Journal Article Nature reviews. Molecular cell biology · August 2021 Full text Cite

A Personalized Glomerulus Chip Engineered from Stem Cell-Derived Epithelium and Vascular Endothelium.

Journal Article Micromachines · August 2021 Progress in understanding kidney disease mechanisms and the development of targeted therapeutics have been limited by the lack of functional in vitro models that can closely recapitulate human physiological responses. Organ Chip (or organ-on-a-chip) microf ... Full text Open Access Cite

Early-career researchers in the time of COVID-19: Adapting to uncertainty.

Journal Article Cell stem cell · May 2021 A recurring theme throughout our year-long "Introductions to the community: Early-career researchers in the time of COVID-19" Voices series was resiliency and adaptation to new and uncertain circumstances. Here, Cell Stem Cell talks with three new investig ... Full text Cite

Reconstitution of the kidney glomerular capillary wall

Chapter · January 1, 2021 Podocytes play an important role in maintaining the function of the glomerulus, and their loss or dysfunction contribute to the initiation and progression of kidney disease. The tissue interface consisting of podocytes and fenestrated endothelial cells con ... Full text Cite

Models of kidney glomerulus derived from human-induced pluripotent stem cells

Chapter · January 1, 2021 Human pluripotent stem cells hold tremendous promise for understanding tissue development and disease mechanisms, and for in vitro modeling of organ function. However, the use of stem cells to model and understand human kidney development had remained elus ... Full text Cite

Introductions to the Community: Early-Career Researchers in the Time of COVID-19.

Journal Article Cell stem cell · August 2020 COVID-19 has unfortunately halted lab work, conferences, and in-person networking, which is especially detrimental to researchers just starting their labs. Through social media and our reviewer networks, we met some early-career stem cell investigators imp ... Full text Open Access Cite

Guided Differentiation of Mature Kidney Podocytes from Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Under Chemically Defined Conditions.

Journal Article Journal of visualized experiments : JoVE · July 2020 Kidney disease affects more than 10% of the global population and costs billions of dollars in federal expenditures. The most severe forms of kidney disease and eventual end-stage renal failure are often caused by the damage to the glomerular podocytes, wh ... Full text Open Access Cite

Directed differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem cells into mature kidney podocytes and establishment of a Glomerulus Chip.

Journal Article Nature protocols · July 2018 Protocols have been established to direct the differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells into nephron progenitor cells and organoids containing many types of kidney cells, but it has been difficult to direct the differentiation of iPS ce ... Full text Cite

Mature induced-pluripotent-stem-cell-derived human podocytes reconstitute kidney glomerular-capillary-wall function on a chip.

Journal Article Nature biomedical engineering · January 2017 An in vitro model of the human kidney glomerulus - the major site of blood filtration - could facilitate drug discovery and illuminate kidney-disease mechanisms. Microfluidic organ-on-a-chip technology has been used to model the human proximal tubul ... Full text Cite

Engineered in vitro disease models.

Chapter · January 2015 The ultimate goal of most biomedical research is to gain greater insight into mechanisms of human disease or to develop new and improved therapies or diagnostics. Although great advances have been made in terms of developing disease models in animals, such ... Full text Cite

Substratum-induced differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells reveals the coactivator YAP is a potent regulator of neuronal specification.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · September 2014 Physical stimuli can act in either a synergistic or antagonistic manner to regulate cell fate decisions, but it is less clear whether insoluble signals alone can direct human pluripotent stem (hPS) cell differentiation into specialized cell types. We previ ... Full text Cite

Glycosaminoglycan-binding hydrogels enable mechanical control of human pluripotent stem cell self-renewal.

Journal Article ACS nano · November 2012 Reaping the promise of human embryonic stem (hES) cells hinges on effective defined culture conditions. Efforts to identify chemically defined environments for hES cell propagation would benefit from understanding the relevant functional properties of the ... Full text Cite

Synthetic polymer scaffold supports human embryonic stem cell adhesion and proliferation in defined conditions

Conference ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY · August 19, 2012 Link to item Cite

High-throughput discovery of synthetic surfaces that support proliferation of pluripotent cells.

Journal Article Journal of the American Chemical Society · February 2010 Synthetic materials that promote the growth or differentiation of cells have advanced the fields of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Most functional biomaterials are based on a handful of peptide sequences derived from protein ligands for cell ... Full text Cite

Comparative studies of quercetin interactions with monophosphate nucleotides using UV-Vis spectroscopy and electrochemical techniques

Journal Article Electroanalysis · January 1, 2007 The nature and extent of the interactions of phytoestrogens such as quercetin (Q) with monophosphate nucleotides have implications in cell cycle arrest, DNA damage, and inhibition of intracellular enzymes involved with cell proliferation. We have studied t ... Full text Cite