Michael Rudnicki, University of Ottawa

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Medicine Professor Sprott Centre for Stem Cell Research Ottawa, Ontario mrudnicki@ohri.ca Office: (613) 739-6740

Bio/Research

Dr. Michael Rudnicki is a Senior Scientist and the Director of the Regenerative Medicine Program and the Sprott Centre for Stem Cell Research at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. He is a Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. Dr. Rudnicki is the Scientific Dire...

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Bio/Research

Dr. Michael Rudnicki is a Senior Scientist and the Director of the Regenerative Medicine Program and the Sprott Centre for Stem Cell Research at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. He is a Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. Dr. Rudnicki is the Scientific Director of the Canadian Stem Cell Network and the International Regulome Consortium.

Dr. Rudnicki received his Ph.D. at the University of Ottawa in 1988 with Dr. Michael McBurney where he examined the control of gene expression during embryonal carcinoma cell differentiation. Dr. Rudnicki trained at the post-doctoral level at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Whitehead Institute with Dr. Rudolf Jaenisch. His post-doctoral studies involved the genetic dissection of the function of the MyoD-family of transcription factors by gene targeting. Dr. Rudnicki was appointed Assistant Professor at McMaster University in 1992. In 2000, he moved to Ottawa to join the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute.

Dr. Rudnicki is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, he holds the Canada Research Chair in Molecular Genetics, and is an International Research Scholar of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is an Associate Editor of Journal of Cell Biology and Cell Stem Cell, and has organized international research conferences as one of the founding directors of the Society for Muscle Biology. He holds operating grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, and Genome Canada.

Dr Rudnicki's laboratory works to understand the molecular mechanisms that regulate the determination, proliferation, and differentiation of stem cells during embryonic development and during tissue regeneration. The lab has conducted extensive studies into both embryonic myogenesis and the function of stem cells in adult skeletal muscle. Towards this end, the lab employs molecular genetic and genomic approaches to determine the function and roles played by regulatory factors. They identified Pax7 as a transcription factor required for the specification of satellite cells, and identified Wnt signaling as playing an important role in the myogenic specification of adult stem cells. His research has been published in scientific journals that include Cell, Genes & Development, Nature Cell Biology and PLoS Biology.



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