Jonathan Barasch
Jonathan Barasch, MD, PhD, is the Principal Investigator of Project Three. He is Lambert Professor of Medicine and Pathology and Cell Biology. He was elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the American Association of Physicians.
Barasch identified a mechanism that generates epithelial tubules from mesenchymal cells and the underlying a critical transcription factor, called Tfcp2l1, that underlies the conversion of cell types and their diversification in the lower tracks of the kidney via both cell autonomous Tfcp2l1 activity and cell non-autonomous Tfcp2l1 activity via Notch signaling. Tfcp2l1 “induced tubulogenesis” and knockouts revealed a failure of epithelial development of primordial “double positive” “transitional” progenitors resulting in a failure of intercalated cell epithelial development and its targets — expression of urinary acidification, expression of bacteriostatic NGAL and expression of a heme detoxification pathway.