Dr. Shroyer’s laboratory is focused on understanding the mechanisms that control intestinal development and homeostasis, and translating this knowledge into novel therapeutic approaches to treat diseases of the intestine such as IBD and colorectal cancer. His laboratory has elucidated roles for epithelial transcription factors such as Atoh1 (Math1), Gfi1, and Spdef in development and differentiation of the intestine. Moreover, his laboratory has translated these findings to human diseases, by showing that Atoh1 and its target Spdef are tumor suppressors that are frequently silenced in colon cancers, and that these genes are essential targets of Notch inhibitory drugs.
In addition to these mechanistic studies, Dr. Shroyer’s laboratory has recently developed novel organ culture methods to direct differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells into intestinal tissue to study intestinal development and disease, and has used intestinal stem cell-derived organoids in quantitative assays to evaluate intestinal stem cell activity. His group is applying these novel organoid systems to develop improved therapeutics and models for diseases such as cancer, inherited syndromes such as NGLY1 Deficiency (a defect in protein degradation), infectious diseases, and more.
