Roles
Research Professor of Surgery
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Biography
Dr. Domínguez-Bendala obtained his undergraduate degree (BSc) in Biological Sciences at the University of Seville (Spain) in 1993. After his graduation, he served as an officer (second lieutenant) in the Spanish Air Force, in the context of a special military service program for outstanding college students. He got an MSc degree from University College London (UCL) (UK) on Applied Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (1997), and subsequently secured a highly competitive BBSRC studentship to pursue a doctoral project on gene targeting in embryonic stem cells at the Roslin Institute (University of Edinburgh, UK). Guided by the late Dr. Jim McWhir, one of the creators of Dolly the sheep, he obtained his PhD in 2000. His team was among the very first to work on human embryonic stem cells, an expertise that he brought to the University of Miami. He joined the Diabetes Research Institute (DRI) in 2001 and has developed the entirety of his scientific career there, first as a postdoctoral associate and then, since 2004, through the Faculty ranks. In addition to his academic and research duties, he also serves as the Chairman of the Embryonic Stem Cell Research Oversight (ESCRO) Committee of the University of Miami. -
Teaching Interests
While Dr. Domínguez-Bendala's time/effort is protected for research, with no teaching obligations, he has actively engaged on undergraduate and graduate education since becoming a Faculty member at the University of Miami in 2004. In total, he has trained and mentored 30 undergraduate and 27 graduate students. He has also directed 6 PhD projects, served on multiple thesis committees and supervised 8 postdoctoral associates. -
Research Interests
The main lines of research in the Domínguez-Bendala Lab revolve around the development of regenerative strategies for type 1 diabetes, including stem cell differentiation into insulin-producing ß-cells and islet regeneration. Alongside Dr. Chris Fraker, his team discovered the key instructive role of molecular oxygen to drive ß-cell differentiation (Fraker et al., Stem Cells 2007; Cechin et al, Stem Cells Transl Med 2014), and patented novel culture devices that provide enhanced oxygenation for stem cell cultures. They also developed innovative genetic fail-safe approaches (Qadir et al., Stem Cell Rep, 2019) to enhance the safety of pluripotent stem cell transplantation.
Since 2011, the teams led by Dr. Juan Domínguez-Bendala and Dr. Ricardo L. Pastori (Director, Molecular Biology Laboratory) operate as one highly collaborative unit in the field of pancreatic cell regeneration. In particular, they have focused their joint efforts on the induction of human pancreatic ductal BMP-responsive progenitor cells, which they have identified and characterized by lineage tracing (Klein et al., Diabetes, 2015; Qadir et al., Cell Rep, 2018); single-cell RNAseq and transplantation of sorted populations (Qadir et al., PNAS, 2020); and organotypic culture (human pancreatic slices) techniques (Qadir et al., Nature Comms, 2020). Their seminal contribution to the development of the latter has enabled for the first time the real-time monitoring of ß-cell regeneration in an in vitro setting that resembles the native organ. The research pipeline of the Pancreatic Regeneration lab is expected to help us realize the full potential of single-cell transcriptomics to unveil dynamic biological processes, model human pancreatic disease, and, ultimately, enable the development of regenerative therapies for diabetes. -
Publications
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