Prof. Douglas W. DeSimone is a Professor in the Department of Cell Biology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and Associate Director of the Morphogenesis and Regenerative Medicine (MRM) Institute, one of the Virginia 2020 initiatives. He received his undergraduate training in Life Sciences from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (B.S., 1979) and did doctoral work in Biology at Dartmouth College (Ph.D., 1985). As a graduate student at Dartmouth and the Marine Biological laboratory in Woods Hole he studied the early development of sea urchins, which helped fuel a burgeoning interest in understanding the ways in which embryonic cells interact and rearrange to form recognizable structure. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1985-88), Dr. DeSimone was involved in research that led to the molecular characterization of the integrins, which are an important family of cell surface receptor proteins that cells use to sense and respond to their extracellular environments. In 1989, he joined the faculty in the School of Medicine at UVA as an Assistant Professor and was a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences from 1989-1992.
Research in the DeSimone laboratory centers on the problem of morphogenesis, which is the process biological systems use to generate form and develop increasingly complex structures needed to carry out the specialized functions of tissues, organs and whole organisms. Prof. DeSimone is interested in elucidating how the "linear" information encoded in genomes is played out over time to yield the fantastic variety of 3-dimensional biological form that we associate with all multi-celled organisms. Basic knowledge derived from such "simple" model systems will be critical to the field of regenerative medicine and the application of sound engineering principles to produce replacement tissues and organs in the years ahead.
The DeSimone Laboratory
Douglas W. DeSimone's Home Page
Morphogenesis and Regenerative Medicine Institute
