Jacquelyn Maher, MD

Our laboratory studies basic biological processes relevant to liver biology and disease. Our main focus is on nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which affects 25% of the world’s population. We have extensive experience modeling NAFLD in mouse models, but have recently redirected our research to concentrate on characterization of NAFLD disease signatures in human liver cells differentiated from iPSCs. We conduct studies on iPSC-derived liver cells from a large cohort of NAFLD and control patients, who harbor a variety of genetic variants associated with NAFLD. Our goal is to determine how genetic variants, alone and in combination, contribute to NAFLD disease phenotypes in iPSC-derived liver cell culture systems.