Satish Kumar, PhD

Research Focus

Dr. Satish Kumar’s research focuses on developing and applying innovative induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) based methods, genome editing technologies, and in-vitro cell models to identify genetic and environmental determinants of human disease risk. Dr. Kumar is developing novel approaches for in-vitro modeling and high-throughput multi-omic analysis of cellular models for various human diseases and disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, major depressive disorders, infectious diseases, human cancers, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cardiomyopathies, obesity, and fatty liver disease. 

He has developed an efficient iPSC reprogramming methodology for cryopreserved lymphoblastoid (immortalized B lymphocytes) cell lines (LCLs). This cost-effective and highly successful method has the potential to have a significant impact in the field, as many sample repositories around the world have banked LCLs that can be utilized for iPSC generation. Using this method and a large LCL repository maintained at the Division of Human Genetics and South Texas Diabetes and Obesity Institute (STDOI), Dr. Kumar has established a large iPSC resource from hundreds of individuals of the STDOI’s longitudinal Mexican American Family Study. This stem cell resource is being used in several large genetic and functional genomic studies in the institute, including multi-year multi-million-dollar projects funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH) on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and the study of Genotype×Environment interaction. Dr. Kumar serves as a Multi-Principal Investigator and Project Co-Leader on these projects. In another NIH-funded project, Dr. Kumar has developed iPSC reprogramming and differentiation methodologies for Monodelphis domestica, a well-established laboratory-bred marsupial animal model. The generated M. domestica iPSCs are the first integration-free and the second ever reprogrammed from a marsupial species. The established M. domestica iPSCs are being used by laboratories around the world in comparative biology and biomedical research. More recently, Dr. Kumar has developed a genome-edited model of amyloid beta stress to study the etiology of sporadic late-onset Alzheimer’s disease.        

Apart from his current endeavor in developing iPSC-based methodologies and cellular models of human disease, Dr. Kumar has had a major role in several large-scale, NIH, and industry-funded human genetics projects, aimed at identifying genes influencing human complex diseases. He also has a strong interest in human phylogenetics, mitochondrial functions, and mitochondrial retrograde regulation and their role in human disease risk.