Rekha Samuel's Biography

Rekha Samuel, Professor, Christian Medical College

Dr. Rekha Samuel earned her MD in Pathology at the Christian Medical College and Hospital, Vellore, India.
She was awarded a postdoctoral overseas fellowship by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, and spent three years training in vascular tissue engineering at Dr. Rakesh K. Jain’s laboratory at Harvard Medical School, Boston.
During this period (July 2008- July 2011) she created functional blood vessels using human induced pluripotent stem cell- derived vascular cells, for the first time in mice using innovative animal models and in vivo imaging with the multiphoton laser-scanning microscope (Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2013 Jul 30;110(31):12774-9).
She will present this work at the Clinical Applications of Stem Cells conference in Singapore in February 2015.

Rekha returned three years ago to establish the vascular biology laboratory at the Centre for Stem Cell Research at the Christian Medical College, Vellore, India. Her lab currently focuses on dissecting the pathophysiology and molecular mechanisms of Diabetic microvasculopathy using the Gestational Diabetic placenta.