Kristyn Masters

My lab employs techniques from biomaterials, tissue engineering, bioconjugate chemistry, gene editing, and microfabrication, to create in vitro environments that model disease progression. We then apply molecular and cellular biology and computational tools to examine cell/tissue outcomes in these biomimetic culture platforms. Through this approach, we seek to: 1) understand how cells integrate multiple cues to make ‘decisions’ about their fate, and 2) decipher disease pathogenesis and elucidate the key stimuli involved, with the intent of using this knowledge to inform the design of clinical therapies. In the context of diabetes, we perform research on chronic wound healing. Specifically, we look at factors that regulate keratinocyte migration during wound closure, and how features of the diabetic microenvironment affect these behaviors. Our work in this area ranges from characterizing intracellular signaling pathways that drive collective cell movement to development of wound dressing approaches that can deliver therapeutics to advance cell migration.