Elena Matsa

Elena Matsa, PhD, Instructor, Stanford Cardiovascular Institute, Stanford University School of Medicine

 

Research Description: Dr. Matsa studies human induced pluripotent stem cells to model cardiovascular disease and cardiomyocyte-drug interactions. She uses state-of-the-art technologies for next-generation sequencing, genome editing, and hiPSC characterization in projects using high throughput automated characterization of human hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes (CMs), investigation of the pathological mechanisms associated with Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM) using patient-specific hiPSCs as a disease model, and use of hiPSC-CMs as a potential functional readout platform for precision medicine. As an Instructor, she is now coordinating a team of post-doctoral fellows for the development and optimization of drug screening assays in hiPSC-CMs, manages full-time research associates, mentors graduate students, and conducts independent research experiments. While at Stanford, she has published first author research papers (Matsa et al, Cell Stem Cell, 2016) and review papers (Circ. Res. (2014) 114(1):21-27; Sci Transl Med. (2014) 6, 239ps6; Physiological Reviews (2016) 96(3):1093-126.), a book chapter (Springer Press), and co-authored several other research and review papers (Nature Medicine, Nature Methods, Cell Stem Cell, Nature Cardiology, Circ Res, Stem Cell Reports). She has also successfully attracted extramural funding from the AHA and the NHLBI. She is an awardee of the joint CVI Seed/SDRC P&F award for her studies of genetic variation determining patient-specific responses to anti-diabetic drugs.

Selected relevant publications (Stanford DRC Members in BOLD):

  1. Matsa E, Burridge PW, Yu KH, Ahrens JH, Termglinchan V, Wu H, Liu C, Shukla P, Sayed N, Churko JM, Shao N, Woo NA, Chao AS, Gold JD, Karakikes I, Snyder MP, Wu JC. (2016) Transcriptome Profiling of Patient-Specific Human iPSC-Cardiomyocytes Predicts Individual Drug Safety and Efficacy Responses In Vitro. Cell Stem Cell 19(3):311-25. doi: 10.1016/j.stem.2016.07.006.
     
  2. Burridge PW, Li YF, Elena Matsa, Wu H, Ong S, Sharma A, Holmstrom A, Chang AC, Coronado MJ, Ebert ED, Knowles JW, Telli ML, Witteles RM, Blau HM, Bernstein D, Altman RB, Wu JC (2016) Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Recapitulate Breast Cancer Patients’ Predilection to Doxorubicin-Induced Cardiotoxicity. Nature Medicine; 22(5):547-56 .
     
  3. Elena Matsa, Burridge PW, Wu JC (2014) Human Stem Cells for Modeling Heart Disease and for Drug Discovery. Science Translational Medicine: 6, 239ps6
     
  4. Burridge PW, Elena Matsa, Shukla P., Lin ZC, Churko JM, Ebert AD, Lan F, Diecke S, Huber B, Mordwinkin NM, Plews JR, Abilez JO, Cui B, Gold JD, Wu JC (2014) Chemically Defined and Small Molecule-Based Generation of Human Cardiomyocytes. Nature Methods; 11:855-860.
     
  5. Elena Matsa, Dick E, Bispham J, Reza M, Guglieri M, Staniforth A, Watson S, Kumari R, Lochmüller H, Young LE, Darling D, Denning C (2011) Two new protocols to enhance the production and isolation of human induced pluripotent stem cell lines. Stem Cell Res 6(2): 158-67
     
  6. Dick E, Elena Matsa, Young LE, Darling D, Denning C (2011) Accelerating the generation of human induced pluripotent stem cells by coupling high titre lentivirus and column-based positive selection of hiPSCs. Nature Protocols 6(6):701-14.