Jenny Hsieh is an American cell biologist and Semmes Foundation professor at the

University of Texas at San Antonio The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA or UT San Antonio) is a Public university, public research university in San Antonio, Texas, United States. Established in 1969,Andrew Fire Andrew Zachary Fire (born April 27, 1959) is an American biologist and professor of pathology and of genetics at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with Craig C. Mell ...

. In 2005, Hsieh completed a postdoctoral fellowship with

Fred Gage Fred "Rusty" Gage (born October 8, 1950) is an American geneticist known for his discovery of stem cells in the adult human brain. Gage is a former president (2018–2023) of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where he holds the Vi and Jo ...

at the

Salk Institute The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is a scientific research institute in the La Jolla community of San Diego, California. The independent, non-profit institute was founded in 1960 by Jonas Salk, the developer of the polio vaccine; among th ...

Career

Hsieh was a professor at the

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UT Southwestern or UTSW) is a public academic health science center in Dallas, Texas. With approximately 23,000 employees, more than 3,000 full-time faculty, and nearly 4 million outpatient ...

from 2006 to 2018, when she moved to the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). At UTSA, Hsieh holds the Semmes Foundation Chair in Cell Biology, and is the founding director of the UTSA Brain Health Consortium, a program to connect brain researchers across disciplines. Hsieh's research focuses on the use of

Induced pluripotent stem cell Induced pluripotent stem cells (also known as iPS cells or iPSCs) are a type of pluripotent stem cell that can be generated directly from a somatic cell. The iPSC technology was pioneered by Shinya Yamanaka and Kazutoshi Takahashi in Kyoto, Jap ...

s to create in vitro models of

neurogenesis Neurogenesis is the process by which nervous system cells, the neurons, are produced by neural stem cells (NSCs). This occurs in all species of animals except the porifera (sponges) and placozoans. Types of NSCs include neuroepithelial cells ( ...

. She intends to use this to develop regenerative treatments for neurological disorders. During the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, Hsieh studied the potential for neural infection by

SARS-CoV-2 Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2) is a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the respiratory illness responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus previously had the Novel coronavirus, provisional nam ...

using neural organoids. Her initial results, based on exposing neural

organoid An organoid is a miniaturised and simplified version of an organ produced ''in vitro'' in three dimensions that mimics the key functional, structural, and biological complexity of that organ. It is derived from one or a few cells from a tissu ...

s to the virus, suggested that infection of

glia Glia, also called glial cells (gliocytes) or neuroglia, are non-neuronal cells in the central nervous system (the brain and the spinal cord) and in the peripheral nervous system that do not produce electrical impulses. The neuroglia make up ...

might be involved in neurological symptoms such as loss of taste or smell.

References

Johns Hopkins University alumni American women biologists Living people Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women {{US-biologist-stub