M.D., Medicine, University of Rochester School of Medicine, NY
Ph.D., Microbiology and Immunology, University of Rochester School of Medicine, NY

Training:

Dr. Zambidis earned his M.D./Ph.D. in the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, Rochester, N.Y. He did his Pediatrics Residency in the Department of Pediatrics, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, and his clinical/research fellowship in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD and the National Cancer Institute at the NIH. He has been on the Oncology and Pediatrics faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine since 2005.

Certifications

American Board of Pediatrics
American Association of Pediatrics
American Society of Hematology

Clinical Expertise

Pediatric oncology specializing in hematologic malignancies, blood and bone marrow transplantation (BMT), stem cell biology and therapeutics, and immune system engineering.

Research Summary:

Dr. Zambidis is interested in the developmental biology of normal and malignant hematopoietic stem cells. His group employs genetic manipulation and differentiation of human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) to study the cellular and molecular mechanisms of human hematopoiesis. Using human embryonic stem cells (hESC) derived from both normal and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD)-screened embryos, as well as human iPSC, he is exploring how early mesodermal progenitors and human hemangioblast (bi-potential progenitor of hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) and endothelium) may give rise to the entire human hematopoietic and vascular systems, and whether such progenitors can be derived and expanded from differentiating human iPSC. His laboratory is studying the role of a variety of proteins and signaling molecules that are critically important in orchestrating the initiation of human embryonic hematopoiesis by directing the formation of human hemato-vascular progenitors in hESC and hiPSC. hESC/hiPSC-derived blood progenitors are also important in the understanding of the developmental origins of pediatric leukemia, but also for clinical HSC transplantation. A major area of focus is determining the shared molecular circuits that regulate both malignant transformation and the maintenance of pluripotency. Applying these principles of shared biology between hematopoietic stem-progenitors and pluripotent stem cells, his group recently accomplished the creation of improved, highly efficient methods for generating nonintegrated, non-viral human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC) lines from myeloid progenitors that possess enhanced differentiation capacities and rapid loss of epigenetic memory.

Publications

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