APRIL PYLE, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics

April Pyle is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics and the David Geffen School of Medicine, as well as a member of the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Medicine. Dr. Pyle received her Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee in 2002 in Dr. Mary Ann Handel¹s lab where she worked on understanding the origins of aneuploidy and chromosome abnormalities in mouse models during spermatogenesis. She was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Peter Donovan at the Kimmel Cancer Center in Philadelphia, PA, and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. During her fellowship, she discovered key survival factors important for the growth of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs).

Dr. Pyle's laboratory is primarily interested in dissecting cell fate decisions required to maintain stable, pluripotent hESCs and how this information may be applicable to embryonic development and cellular specification. How hESCs make decisions to survive, self-renew or differentiate is currently not well understood. Her research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms associated with cell fate decisions and what happens when these decisions go awry, leading to cellular transformation. It is becoming increasingly evident that genes known to perform critical roles during early embryogenesis, particularly during stem cell renewal, pluripotency, and survival, are also expressed during the development of cancer. Therefore, Dr. Pyle¹s lab will use hESCs as a model system to examine not only stem cell biology and differentiation, but also to improve our understanding of cancer progression and human development.

- Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center Biography