Jennifer Fang, PhD
Assistant Professor of Cell & Molecular Biology
Education & Affiliations
Biography
Dr. Fang received her bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences from Cornell University and her doctoral degree in Physiology from the University of Arizona. She did her postdoctoral work at Yale University and at the University of California, Irvine before joining the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at Tulane University
Research
Dr. Fang’s lab is interested in better understanding how blood vessels grow, remodel, and reorganize during healthy tissue development to form mature structures such as arteries, capillaries and veins, and how this process might go awry in disease leading to disorganized and malformed blood vessels that can significantly compromise patient health. To address this question, Dr. Fang uses a combination of in vivo animal models and novel microphysiological organ-on-a-chip microfluidic platforms to study how cells of the vasculature communicate with in growing and remodeling blood vessels. One area of active research is to explore how cell-cell miscommunication leads to vascular malformations in the rare disease, Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia (HHT). Another area of interest is to study the regulatory signals that control sprouting angiogenesis during development and in diseases such as cancer and retinopathy.