Reilly Lab

The Reilly Group at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center is dedicated to translational and genomic studies of human cardiometabolic disorders. With expertise in preclinical cell and rodent models, as well as human functional genomics and epidemiology, the group is comprised of wet-lab, computational, and clinical scientists integrated across the translational spectrum in defining the mechanisms of complex cardiovascular and metabolic disorders.

Overview of ongoing projects:

• Genomics, epidemiology and clinical trials of coronary heart disease and related risk factors.
• Translational studies of GWAS loci for coronary atherosclerosis (e.g. ADAMTS7, LIPA etc.)
• RNA-seq and single-cell RNA-seq of tissue- and cell-specific transcriptomes in humans.
• Functional genomics in human models e.g. patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC), CRISPR/Cas gene editing, modeling of disease genes in hiPSC-derived macrophages.
• Rodent loss-of-function and gain-of-function models of genes in human cardiometabolic diseases.
• Chemokines and chemokine receptors in obesity-associated inflammatory and metabolic traits.
• Applications of novel biostatistical methods for big genomic data.

May-Grünwald-Giemsa staining of human iPSC-derived macrophages (IPSDM) showing macrophage-like morphology.

Phagocytosis of Alexa Fluor (AF) 594-labeled zymosan particles by human iPSC-derived macrophages (IPSDM)

Vascular injury mouse models reveal a role for Adamts7 in neointimal formation in response to injury.

Using hyperlipidemic mouse models of atherosclerosis, we showed that Adamts7 activity is proatherogenic.

Immunofluorescence in human aortic smooth muscle cells reveals that ADAMTS7 is expressed at both the cell surface and in cytoplasm, suggesting that it may shuttle to and from the cell membrane.