Shijie He, PhD

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Dr. Shijie He is an instructor in CTEU at MGH and HMS. His research interests include intestinal stem cell biology, mechanobiology, cancer development and metastasis, cancer prevention, and drug development. Briefly, his previous studies suggest a closed feedback loop between the biochemical signaling pathways and cellular mechanical forces which ultimately determine the cell fate in maintaining homeostasis or developing disorders. Dr. He also developed a novel platform for culturing 2.5D gut organoids that recapitulate the features of in vivo gut epithelium. Using this platform, Dr. He elucidated how tissue stiffening during IBD impacts intestinal stem cell fate and innovated in next generation of organoid-based drug screening pipeline. In the future, Dr. He will continue bench-to-bed translational research and discover novel therapeutics for patients.

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Dr. He earned his PhD at Beijing Institute of Technology and received postdoc training at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Department of Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital.

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Key publications:

He S., Lei P., Kang W., Cheung P.,….., Yilmaz ÖH, Fredberg J.J., and Saeidi N., Stiffness Restricts the Stemness of the Intestinal Stem Cells and Skews Their Differentiation Toward Goblet Cells, Gastroenterology, 2023, 164(7), 1137-1151.e15

He S., Green Y., Saeidi N., Li X., Fredberg J.J., Ji B., and Pismen L.M., 2020, A theoretical model of collective cell polarization and alignment, Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids 137, 103860

He S., Liu C., Li X., Ma S., Huo B., and Ji B., 2015, Dissecting the collective cell behaviors in polarization and alignment on micropatterned substrate. Biophysical Journal, 109 (3), 489-500

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