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Yijen L. Wu, PhD

  • Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
  • Director, Animal Imaging Core Laboratory
  • Graduate Faculty of Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh
  • Graduate Faculty of Integrated Systems Biology (ISB), School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh
  • Team Lead, Children's Neuroscience Institute (CNI)

Wu Research Program: 

MuSIC 4 MIND: 

Multi-Systems Imaging Characterization for Mitochondrial Involvement in Neurological Disease

The overarching goal for the “MuSIC 4 MIND” lab is to understand how brain functions, the placenta-brain axis, and the heart-brain connection by launching novel sensitive imaging methodology: (A) to understand etiology and reveal what cannot be seen, understood, or appreciated with the current clinical practice by developing more sensitive advance imaging methods; (B) to facilitate early detection and diagnosis before irreversible tissue damage occurs to allow timely intervention; and (C) to establish non-invasive imaging-based surrogate biomarkers for guiding therapeutic development and efficacy. The current research programs entail leveraging the novel imaging methods to guide molecular investigation of mitochondrial involvement in epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic epileptogenesis, fetal alcohol syndrome, in utero exposure on neurodevelopment, placenta-brain axis in fetal neurodevelopment in congenital heart disease, childhood-onset epileptic encephalopathy, mitochondrial disorders, and developmental origin of late-onset neurodegenerative diseases in rodent models.

 

Find more information about the Animal Imaging Core here.

Professional and Scientific Society Memberships

International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM)   
Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (SCMR)                            
American Heart Association (AHA)    
Society of Neuroscience (SfN)

Education & Training

  • Carnegie Mellon University

Selected Publications

Stapleton MC, Koch SP, Cortes DRE, Wyman S, Schwab KE, Mueller C, McKennan CG, Boehm-Sturm P, Wu YL (2023) Apolipoprotein-E (ApoE) Deficiency Leads to Brain Network Alteration Characterized by Diffusion MRI and Graph Theory. Frontiers in neuroscience. 2023, doi:10.3389/fnins.2023.1183312. PMID: 38075287;PMCID: PMC10702609.

Turan S, Chaillet JR, Stapleton MC, Wu YL. Genome Editing and Myocardial Development. Advances in experimental medicine and biology. 2023;1396:53-73. Epub 2022/12/02. doi: 10.1007/978-981-19-5642-3_4. PubMed PMID: 36454459.

Wu YL. Cardiac MRI Assessment of Mouse Myocardial Infarction and Regeneration. Methods Mol Biol.2021;2158:81-106. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-0668-1_8. PubMed PMID: 32857368.

Wu Y, Pearce PS, Rapuano A, Hitchens TK, de Lanerolle NC, Pan JW. Metabolic changes in early poststatus epilepticus measured by MR spectroscopy in rats. J Cereb Blood Flow Metab. 2015 Nov;35(11):1862-70. PubMed PMID: 26104287; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4635243.

Chen Z, Stapleton MC, Xie Y, Li D, Wu YL, Christodoulou AG. Physics-informed deep learning for T2-deblurred superresolution turbo spin echo MRI. Magnetic resonance in medicine. 2023. Epub 2023/08/14. doi: 10.1002/mrm.29814. PubMed PMID: 37578085.

Shang P, Simpson JD, Taylor GM, Sutherland DM, Welsh OL, Aravamudhan P, Natividade RDS, Schwab K, Michel JJ, Poholek AC, Wu Y, Rajasundaram D, Koehler M, Alsteens D, Dermody TS. Paired immunoglobulin-like receptor B is an entry receptor for mammalian orthoreovirus. Nature Commun.2023;14(1):2615. Epub 2023/05/06. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-38327-6. PubMed PMID: 37147336; PMCID: PMC10163058.

Golbourn BJ, Halbert ME, Halligan KE, Varadharajan S, Krug B, Mbah N, Kabir N, Stanton AJ, Locke A, Casillo S, Zhao Y, Sanders L, Cheney A, Mullett SJ, Mirhadi S, McCarl L, Chang Y-F, Wu YL, Gatesman TA, Cruz AF, Zapotocky M, Hu B, Kohanbash G, Wang X, Vartanian A, Moran M, Lieberman F, Amankulor NM, Wendell SG, Morozova O, Panigrahy A, Felker J, Bertrand KC, Kleinman C, Rich JN, Broniscer A, Lyssiotis C, Jabado N, Pollack IF, Mack SC and Agnihotri S. Loss of MAT2A and methionine dependency are indispensable for H3K27M mutant gliomas. Nature Cancer. 2022, May;3(5):629-648, PMID: 35422502, DOI:10.1038/s43018-022-00348-3 

Kapralov AA, Yang Q, Dar HH, Tyurina YY, Anthonymuthu TS, Kim R, St Croix CM, Mikulska-Ruminska K, Liu B, Shrivastava IH, Tyurin VA, Ting HC, Wu YL, Gao Y, Shurin GV, Artyukhova MA, Ponomareva LA, Timashev PS, Domingues RM, Stoyanovsky DA, Greenberger JS, Mallampalli RK, Bahar I, Gabrilovich DI, Bayir H, Kagan VE. Redox lipid reprogramming commands susceptibility of macrophages and microglia to ferroptotic death. Nature Chem Biol. 2020;16(3):278-90. Epub 2020/02/23. doi: 10.1038/s41589-019-0462-8. PMID: 32080625. PMCID: PMC7233108 .

Liu X, Yagi H, Saeed S, Bais AS, Gabriel GC, Chen Z, Peterson KA, Li Y, Schwartz MC, Reynolds WT, Saydmohammed M, Gibbs B, Wu Y, Devine W, Chatterjee B, Klena NT, Kostka D, de Mesy Bentley KL, Ganapathiraju MK, Dexheimer P, Leatherbury L, Khalifa O, Bhagat A, Zahid M, Pu W, Watkins S, Grossfeld P, Murray SA, Porter GA Jr, Tsang M, Martin LJ, Benson DW, Aronow BJ, Lo CW. The complex genetics ofhypoplastic left heart syndrome. Nature Genetics. 2017 Jul;49(7):1152-1159. PubMed PMID: 28530678

Zusman BE, Wu Y, Kochanek PM, Vagni VE, Janesko-Feldman K, Gerzanich V, Simard JM, Karahalios K, Mihaljevic S, Raikwar S, Rani A, Rulney J, Desai SM, Catapano J, Jha RM. Precision Effects of Glibenclamide on MRI Endophenotypes in Clinically Relevant Murine Traumatic Brain Injury. Crit Care Med. 2023;51(2):e45-e59. Epub 2023/01/21. doi: 10.1097/ccm.0000000000005749. PubMed PMID: 36661464; PMCID: PMC9848216

Cummings J, Wu YL, Dixon CE, Henchir J, Simard JM, Panigrahy A, Kochanek PM, Jha RM, Aneja RK. Abcc8 (sulfonylurea receptor-1) knockout mice exhibit reduced axonal injury, cytotoxic edema and cognitive dysfunction vs. wild-type in a cecal ligation and puncture model of sepsis. J Neuroinflammation. 2023;20(1):12. Epub 2023/01/22. doi: 10.1186/s12974-023-02692-2. PubMed PMID: 36681815; PMCID: PMC9862964.

Pang D, Wu YL, Alcamo AM, Cummings J, Di Caro V, Walko T, 3rd, Hsue V, Clark RSB, Panigrahy A, Kochanek PM, Aneja RK. Early Axonal Injury and Delayed Cytotoxic Cerebral Edema are Associated With Microglial Activation in a Mouse Model of Sepsis. Shock. 2019. Epub 2019/09/13. doi: 10.1097/shk.0000000000001446. PubMed PMID: 31513049.

Satoh T, Wang L, Espinosa-Diez C, Wang B, Hahn SA, Noda K, Rochon ER, Dent MR, Levine AR, Baust JJ, Wyman S, Wu YL, Triantafyllou GA, Tang Y, Reynolds M, Shiva S, Hilaire CS, Gomez D, Goncharov DA, Goncharova EA, Chan SY, Straub AC, Lai YC, McTiernan CF and Gladwin MT. Metabolic Syndrome Mediates ROS-miR-193b-NFYA-Dependent Downregulation of Soluble Guanylate Cyclase and Contributes to Exercise-Induced Pulmonary Hypertension in Heart Failure With Preserved Ejection Fraction. Circulation. 2021;144:615-637. PMID: 34157861, PMCID: PMC8384699, DOI: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.121.053889 

Zahid M, Feldman K, Garcia-Borrero G, Feinstein T, Pogodzinski N, Xu X, Yurko R, Czachowski M, Wu Y, Mason N, Lo C; Cardiac Targeting Peptide, a Novel Cardiac Vector: Studies in Bio-Distribution, Imaging Application, and  Mechanism of Transduction", Biomolecules. 2018 Nov 14;8(4). PMID: 30441852; PMCID: PMC6315548

Wu YL, Ye Q, Eytan DF, Liu L, Rosario BL, Hitchens TK, Yeh FC, Rooijen van N, Ho C. Magnetic resonance imaging investigation of macrophages in acute cardiac allograft rejection after heart transplantation. Circulation Cardiovasc Imaging. 2013 Nov;6(6):965-73. PubMed PMID: 24097421; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3886711.

Pearce PS, Wu Y, Rapuano A, Kelly KM, de Lanerolle N, Pan JW. Metabolic injury in a variable rat model of post-status epilepticus. Epilepsia. 2016 Dec;57(12):1978-1986. PubMed PMID: 27943308; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5215597

Yeh FC, Liu L, Hitchens TK, Wu YL.   Mapping immune cell infiltration using restricted diffusion MRI. Magn Reson Med. 2017 Feb;77(2):603-612. PubMed PMID: 26843524.

Wu YL, Lo CW.  Diverse application of MRI for mouse phenotyping. Birth Defects Res. 2017 Jun 1;109(10):758-770. PubMed PMID: 28544650.

Wu YL, Ye Q, Foley LM, Hitchens TK, Sato K, Williams JB, Ho C. In situ labeling of immune cells with ironoxide particles: an approach to detect organ rejection by cellular MRI. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2006 Feb 7;103(6):1852-7. PubMed PMID: 16443687; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC1413627.

Wu YL, Ye Q, Sato K, Foley LM, Hitchens TK, Ho C. Noninvasive evaluation of cardiac allograft rejection bycellular and functional cardiac magnetic resonance. JACC Cardiovasc Imaging. 2009 Jun;2(6):731-41.PubMed PMID: 19520344; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2752220.

W, Gollin SM, Wu Y, Christ SE, Yerle M, Leshinski A, Spate LD, Benne JA, Murphy SL, Samuel MS, Walters EM, Hansen SA, Wells KD, Lichter-Konecki U, Wagner RA, Newsome JT, Dobrowolski SF, Vockley J, Prather RS, Nicholls RD. A porcine model of phenylketonuria generated by CRISPR/Cas 9 genome editing. [Print]. JCI Insight; 2020 October. PMID: 33055427, PMCID: PMC7605535