College Welcomes Skeletal Muscle Researcher Radbod Darabi to Pharmacological and Pharmaceutical Sciences Faculty

September 14 — The University of Houston College of Pharmacy recently welcomed Radbod Darabi, M.D., Ph.D., as an associate professor of pharmacology in the Department of Pharmacological and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Dr. Darabi earned his M.D. from Zahedan University of Medical Sciences in Zahedan, Iran, and a Ph.D. of Pharmacology from Iran University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, Iran. He was honored as the top ranked/graduate of both his M.D. and Ph.D. programs. He completed postdoctoral fellowships at Lillehei Heart Institute (LHI) at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

The main interest of Dr. Darabi's lab is to use pluripotent stem cells for skeletal muscle regeneration in muscular dystrophies and muscle injuries. During the last several years, the lab has developed novel methods for multi-lineage differentiation of pluripotent stem cells for cell therapy in mice models of muscular dystrophies and injuries. These include generation of knock-in reporter stem cell lines to study myogenic differentiation, CRISPR/Cas9 gene targeting methods to correct mutated genes in muscular dystrophies, and using bioscaffolds, seeded with stem cells, to treat skeletal muscle injuries.

Dr. Darabi has authored or co-authored more than 45 articles in peer-reviewed journals, including Nature Medicine, Nature Cell Biology, Cell Stem Cell, PNAS, Nature Communications, Molecular Therapy, Circulation Research, and Stem Cells. In addition, he has been invited to write articles for such journals as Cells, the Journal of Stem Cell Research & Therapeutics, and the Journal of Cellular Biochemistry. He serves as associate editor for Frontiers in Physiology; editorial board member on several journals, including Cells, Scientific Reports, and Frontiers in Pharmacology; and ad hoc reviewer/editor for dozens of other journals, such Nature Biotechnology, Molecular Therapy and FASEB.

He has presented more than 25 invited talks internationally and across the U.S., as well at over 30 abstracts at meetings of such organizations as the International Society for Stem Cell Research, American Society of Hematology, and Orthopedic Research Society.

Dr. Darabi serves as investigator or co-investigator on grants totaling over $3.1 million from the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), with an additional $2.1 million in past support from the NIH and the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

His past accolades include the Jerold B. Katz Distinguished Professorship Endowment in Stem Cell Research from UTHealth-Houston, Dr. Marvin and Hadassah Bacaner’s Faculty Award in Research Excellence from the Minnesota Medical Foundation, and Basic Science Research Awards from the University of Minnesota.