Maddie Jackson
Class of 2022
Education: BS + MS Biomedical Engineering at Cal Poly
Biography:
Maddie is interested in Regenerative Medicine as a novel approach to preclinical research and development. Specifically, she is drawn to the implications that the growth of specialized tissues in vitro has on drug development. After completing the Regenerative Medicine program at Cal Poly, she hopes to pursue a PhD, ideally with a lab that allows her to broaden the scope of her research while staying rooted in the world of tissue engineering that she’s come to love at Cal Poly. Further on, she hopes to become a professor and have a research lab of her own.
Internship:
Maddie is interning with the Parast lab at UCSD’s Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, where she’s using hESCs/iPSCs to study the pathophysiology of preeclampsia, a hypertensive disorder during pregnancy. She is utilizing Trisomy 21 iPSC-derived human trophoblast stem cells (hTSC) to capture a subpopulation of bipotent placental epithelial cells called cytotrophoblasts (CTB). It is hypothesized that this subpopulation will maintain an undifferentiated, CDX2+ state that is difficult to achieve in disomy cell lines. By identifying and characterizing this population, Maddie will help establish hTSC lines that will aid in further study of trophoblast differentiation in both healthy and diseased cells.