Cuong Diep Contact Information
Office Hours
Faculty Homepage

Education

BS - Messiah College

PhD - Pennsylvania State University, College of Medicine

Postdoctoral Fellowship - Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital

Visiting Research Associate - University of Pittsburgh

ZebrafishField

Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, Developmental Biology, Kidney

Courses

BIOL 111 Principles of Biology
BIOL 203 Genetics and Development
BIOC 481 Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine

Interests

I am interested in understanding kidney regeneration and kidney development using zebrafish as a vertebrate model system. Kidney disease is a major health problem worldwide due to increasing rates of diabetes and hypertension, and current treatments (such as dialysis and kidney transplant) are not meeting the demand of patients. As such, there is an urgent need for an alternative stem cell/regenerative therapy for treating kidney disease. To this end, I have recently identified for the first time stem cells that are capable of regenerating new kidney tissue in adult zebrafish (Diep et al., Nature, 2011). Projects in my lab focus on how these stem cells are regulated during regeneration and determining their role in development of the adult kidney. Understanding the mechanism that controls these stem cells in zebrafish will provide a first step towards developing a novel stem cell/regenerative therapy for treating kidney disease.

Dr. Diep and Graduate StudentPublications

Pilauri V, Bewley M, Diep C , and Hopper J (2005). Gal80 dimerization and the yeast GAL gene switch. Genetics 169(4):1903-14.

Diep CQ , Peng G, Bewley M, Pilauri V, Ropson I, and Hopper JE (2006). Intragenic suppression of Gal3C interaction with Gal80 in the Saccharomyces cerevisiae GAL gene switch. Genetics 172(1):77-87.

Diep CQ , Tao X, Pilauri V, Losiewicz M, Blank TE, and Hopper JE (2008). Genetic evidence for sites of interaction between the Gal3 and Gal80 proteins of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae GAL gene switch. Genetics 178(2):725-36.

Swanhart LM, Cosentino CC, Diep CQ , Davidson AJ, de Caestecker M, and Hukriede NA (2011). Zebrafish kidney development: Basic science to translational research. Birth Defects Research (Part C: Embryology Today: Reviews) 93(2):141-156.

Diep Coverart 1

Cover art designed by Cuong Diep

Diep CQ and Davidson AJ (2011). Transplantation of cells directly into the kidney of adult zebrafish. Journal of Visualized Experiments 51 pii: 2725.
(http://www.jove.com/details.php?id=2725)

Diep CQ , Ma D, Deo RC, Holm TM, Naylor RW, Arora N, Wingert RA, Bollig F, Djordjevic G, Lichman B, Zhu H, Ikenaga T, Ono F, Englert C, Cowan CA, Hukriede NA, Handin RI, and Davidson AJ (2011). Identification of adult nephron progenitors capable of kidney regeneration in zebrafish. Nature 470(7332):95-100. [Reviewed in Cell Stem Cell 8(3):247-249]

Eichelberger SL and Diep CQ (2014). Analysis of protein-protein interaction in zebrafish kidney stem cells. Keystone Journal of Undergraduate Research 2(1): 9-14.

Diep CQ , Peng Z, Ukah TK, Kelly PM, Daigle RV, and Davidson AJ (2015). Development of the zebrafish mesonephros. genesis 53(3-4):257-269.

Diep Coverart 2

Cover art designed by Cuong Diep

Denio EK, Kelly PM, and Diep CQ (2015). Protein-protein interaction analysis reveals a novel function of the lhx1 transcription factor in zebrafish. BIOS 86(4) December (2015). In press.

Keshari V, Adeeb DB, Simmons AE, Simmons TW, and Diep CQ . Zebrafish as a model to assess the teratogenic potential of nitrite. Journal of Visualized Experiments. In press.