Research
Heart & Lung Diseases and Stem Cell Biology
Appointments
Associate Professor, Anesthesiology & Perioperative Medicine, Broad Stem Cell Research Center
Biography
Mingxia Gu, MD, PhD, investigates how blood vessels contribute to organ development, disease and regeneration. By leveraging patient-specific stem cell models and advanced bioengineering techniques, she seeks to develop novel, personalized therapies for vascular and cardiopulmonary diseases, including congenital heart and lung defects.
For nearly all children born with a structural heart or lung disease, surgery is the only available therapy. Gu’s research aims to expand therapeutic options by developing new therapies and regenerative approaches that could be administered earlier — before birth.
The vasculature is a dynamic and specialized network essential for organ function, possessing significant plasticity and regenerative potential. Gu investigates how blood vessels influence tissue development, disease progression and healing, with the goal of developing new therapies for vascular-related diseases and advancing organ-regeneration strategies.
A central focus of this research involves generating patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cell-, or iPSC-, derived endothelial and smooth muscle cells, as well as vascularized organoids, to create more accurate disease models. By comparing these iPSC-based models with patient-derived vascular lesion samples, Gu has identified disease-specific cellular changes and mapped transcriptomic and epigenomic alterations at single-cell resolution. Recent efforts have focused on engineering vascularized heart, lung and brain organoids to explore how blood vessels interact with surrounding cells during development and disease.
In addition to illuminating disease mechanisms, Gu leverages a high-throughput drug screening platform paired with machine learning algorithms to identify compounds that can reverse disease pathology in a personalized manner. She is also investigating the signaling pathways that direct tissue-specific endothelial cell fate — the process by which vascular cells take on specialized functions — with the goal of regenerating blood vessel networks in congenital heart and lung defects.
Through a multidisciplinary approach that integrates bioengineering, synthetic biology, stem cell biology and computational modeling, Gu’s research insights could drive advances in vascular medicine and regenerative therapies.
Publications
- Ablikim, M, Achasov, MN, Adlarson, P, Ai, XC, Aliberti, R, Amoroso, A et al.. Observation of D^{+}→K_{S}^{0}π^{0}μ^{+}ν_{μ}, Test of Lepton Flavor Universality, and First Angular Analysis of D^{+}→K[over ¯]^{*}(892)^{0}ℓ^{+}ν_{ℓ}. Phys Rev Lett. 2025;135 (17):171801. doi: 10.1103/w9vz-4fq9. PubMed PMID:41202255 .
- Ablikim, M, Achasov, MN, Adlarson, P, Ai, XC, Aliberti, R, Amoroso, A et al.. First Observation of Quantum Correlations in e^{+}e^{-}→XDD[over ¯] and C-Even Constrained DD[over ¯] Pairs. Phys Rev Lett. 2025;135 (17):171901. doi: 10.1103/dkgg-9twj. PubMed PMID:41202241 .
- Wan, CY, Liu, YX, Gong, SG, Zhao, QH, Luo, CJ, Qiu, HL et al.. Non-invasive PECS model for detection of combined post-capillary pulmonary hypertension. Front Med (Lausanne). 2025;12 :1660387. doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1660387. PubMed PMID:41200118 PubMed Central PMC12585943.
- Xu, ZX, Jia, LY, Zhou, F, Li, S, Ban, YB, Wang, H et al.. Ligand Electronic Effect-Tailored Cobalt-Based Metal-Organic Frameworks Enable Accelerated Entropy-Driven Circuit Reactions for Ultrasensitive Fluorescent Detection of Tetracycline Resistance Genes. Anal Chem. 2025; :. doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.5c05048. PubMed PMID:41195812 .
- Lee, HW, Gu, MJ, Kim, D, Ha, SK. NRF2 Activation Suppressed Methylglyoxal-Lysine Dimer-Induced Oxidative Stress and Inflammatory Paracrine Interaction between Macrophages and Adipocytes. Prev Nutr Food Sci. 2025;30 (5):450-458. doi: 10.3746/pnf.2025.30.5.450. PubMed PMID:41180087 PubMed Central PMC12567968.