Michael Kyba, Ph.D.

Michael Kyba, PhD
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Lillehei Endowed Scholar
Mayo Mail Code 366
420 Delaware St. SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Office location:  Nils Hasselmo Hall Room 4-126
Phone: (612) 626-5869
Fax: (612) 624-8118
kyba@umn.edu
Preferred method of contact:  Email

Dr. Kyba is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Hematology-Oncology and Blood and Marrow Transplantation. He is also a member of the Lillehei Heart Institute, and an affiliate member of the Stem Cell Institute.

Dr. Kyba received his PhD degree from the University of British Columbia in 1998, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in stem cell biology at the Whitehead Institute at MIT, Cambridge, MA in 2003.  From 2003-2008, he was Assistant Professor of Developmental Biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, TX. He joined the faculty at the University of Minnesota in July 2008.

Dr. Kyba has published 35 research manuscripts in scientific journals, including: Cell, Science, and Nature Medicine.

Honors and Awards

• 2006 Basil O’Connor Award (March of Dimes)

Research Interests

Deriving therapeutic hematopoietic stem cells from embryonic stem cells.

ES cells are totipotent and capable of recapitulating all of the developmental events of embryogenesis.  They are therefore theoretically the ideal source of cells for regenerative therapies.  However, turning theory into practice is not straightforward, and very few successful models of such therapy exist.  We have developed one successful model, based on regulated expression of members of the Hox family of transcription factors.  Current work is focused on understanding how Hox genes regulate hematopoietic stem cell self-renewal and identifying regulatory circuits under Hox control. 

Skeletal muscle stem cells and FSH muscular dystrophy

Certain degenerative diseases may be the result of ineffective self-renewal or differentiation of lineage specific stem cells.  We are particularly interested in Fascioscapulohumeral Muscular Dystrophy (FSHD), a dominant dystrophy associated with a contraction of 4q subtelomeric repeats.  Although the condition is almost certainly caused by derepression of a gene in the vicinity of 4q, the protein products of candidate genes in this area can not be detected overexpressed in patient muscle samples. Because muscle stem cells (satellite cells) are rare, proteins overexpressed specifically in satellite cells are unlikely to be identified in patient biopsies. We are testing the hypothesis that a Hox gene embedded within the 4q repeats, DUX4, causes FSHD when derepressed in muscle satellite cells.

Selected Recent Publications

Bosnakovski D, Xu Z, Gang EJ, Galindo CL, Liu M, Simsek T, Garner HR, Agha-Mohammadi S, Tassin A, Frédérique Coppée, Belayew A, Perlingeiro RCR, Kyba M (2008) "An isogenetic myoblast screen identifies DUX4-mediated FSHD-associated molecular pathologies"  EMBO J.  27:2766-2779.

Tang W, Zeve D, Suh J, Bosnakovski D, Kyba M, Hammer B, Tallquist MD, Graff JM. (2008) "White fat progenitor cells reside in the Adipose Vasculature"  Science 322:583-586.

Iacovino M, Hernandez C, Xu Z, Bajwa G, Prather M, Kyba M. (2008) “A conserved role for Hox paralog group group 4 in regulation of hematopoietic progenitors”  Stem Cells Dev.  (in press). 

Bosnakovski D, Xu Z, Li W, Thet S, Cleaver O, Perlingeiro RCR, Kyba M (2008) "Prospective isolation of skeletal muscle stem cells with a Pax7 reporter"  Stem Cells  (in press). 

Ismailoglu, I, Yeamans G, Daley GQ, Perlingeiro RCR, Kyba M, (2008) "Mesodermal patterning activity of SCL"  Exp. Hematol.  (in press). 

Bosnakovski, D, Lamb S, Simsek T, Xu Z, Belayew A, Perlingeiro R, Kyba M, (2008) "DUX4c, an FSHD candidate gene, interferes with myogenic regulators and abolishes myoblast differentiation"  Exp. Neurol.  (in press). 

Bondue, A, Lapouge G, Paulissen C, Semeraro C, Iacovino M, Kyba M, Blanpain C. (2008) "Mesp1 acts as a master regulator of multipotent cardiovascular progenitor specification"  Cell Stem Cell  3:69-84. 

Lindsley, RC, Gill JG, Murphy TL, Langer EM, Cai M, Mashayekhi M, Wang W, Niwa N, Nerbonne JM, Kyba M, Murphy KM. (2008) "Mesp1 coordinately regulates cardiovascular fate restriction and epithelial-mesenchymal transition in differentiating ESCs"  Cell Stem Cell  3:55-68. 

Fujita, J, Crane, AM, Souza, MK, Dejosez, M, Kyba, M, Flavell, RA, Thomson, JA, Zwaka, TP (2008) "Caspase activity mediates the differentiation of embryonic stem cells"  Cell Stem Cell  2:595-601. 

Lee D, Park C, Lee H, Lugus JJ, Kim SH, Arentson E, Chung YS, Gomez G, Kyba M, Lin S, Janknecht R, Lim DS, Choi K. (2008) "ER71 acts downstream of BMP, Notch, and Wnt signaling in blood and vessel progenitor specification"  Cell Stem Cell  2:497-507. 

Darabi, R, Gelbach, K, Bachoo, RM, Kamath, S, Osawa, M, Kamm, KE, Kyba M, Perlingeiro, RCR. (2008) "Functional skeletal muscle regeneration from differentiating embryonic stem cells"  Nature Medicine  14:134-143.