2025 M. Irené Ferrer Awardee, Columbia University
Kelley Yan is a physician-scientist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. She received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Wellesley College then completed her MD and PhD degrees through the MSTP at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Her PhD studies were in structural biology and structure/function studies of proteins by NMR spectroscopy. She then trained in Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology at Stanford University, where she also pursued postdoctoral research training in intestinal stem cells. Dr. Yan is currently the Warner-Lambert Assistant Professor of Medicine and of Genetics & Development and the Founding Co-Director of the Organoid Core of the Digestive & Liver Diseases Research Center at Columbia. She practices general adult gastroenterology and is principal investigator of a research program in intestinal stem cell biology. Her laboratory recently identified a novel type of stem cell in the gut that changes our understanding of how the gut regenerates and provides new insights into how tissues heal following injury. Some of these findings have resulted in engineered technologies and drugs that are being developed into therapeutics to treat human diseases. Dr. Yan is the recipient of numerous accolades including the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award for Medical Scientists, the NIH Director’s DP2 New Innovator Award, and the American Gastroenterological Association Young Investigator Award. Outside of work, she enjoys her time with her four young children and her husband, who is also a physician-scientist at Columbia.
What is Dr. Kelley Yan researching?
Intestinal stem cell biology and tissue regeneration.
Why study intestinal stem cells (ISCs)?
This work redefines the identity of the gut’s true stem cells and changes how scientists think about intestinal renewal, regeneration, and how to target stem cells for therapies in cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, and other gut disorders. Columbia Irving Medical Center
What did Dr. Yan discover?
Dr. Yan’s lab made a major, paradigm-shifting discovery about gut stem cells:
- For over 15 years, a specific cell type marked by Lgr5 was thought to be the true intestinal stem cell.
- Using time-resolved lineage tracing and single-cell analysis, Yan and colleagues showed that these Lgr5⁺ cells are actually descendants of a different, more fundamental stem cell population. Columbia Irving Medical Center+2ScienceDirect+2
- They identified a novel stem cell population in the intestinal “isthmus” region (marked by FGFBP1) that:
- Sits higher up in the crypts than classic Lgr5⁺ cells
- Can give rise to all the intestinal lineages, including Lgr5⁺ cells
- Is responsible for regenerating the gut lining after severe injury
Some of these discoveries have already led to engineered technologies and drug concepts being developed toward future therapeutics for human disease.
How did The Foundation for Gender-Specific Medicine’s grant help Dr. Yan’s research?
- The Foundation’s grant served as flexible, early-stage support for Dr. Yan as she was building her independent program in intestinal stem cell biology at Columbia.
- That support helped her:
- Sustain high-risk, high-reward projects redefining intestinal stem cells and regeneration
- Strengthen her organoid and stem-cell technology platform, which underpins work on engineered therapies
- Protect research time and lab resources at a critical career stage, in parallel with other major awards such as the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award and a Lisa Dean Moseley Foundation grant. Department of Genetics and Development
- Bridges gaps left by traditional funding.
- Encourages innovative work that can be extended to sex- and gender-aware medicine, for example by enabling organoid and stem-cell systems that can incorporate sex-specific variables when modeling disease and testing therapies.
What is Dr. Yan‘s current status?
- Warner-Lambert Assistant Professor of Medicine and Assistant Professor of Genetics & Development at Columbia University Irving Medical Center Precision Medicine
- A physician–scientist and practicing adult gastroenterologist at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia Department of Genetics and Development
- Founding Co-Director of the Organoid Core of Columbia’s P30-funded Digestive & Liver Diseases Research Center, where she helps lead organoid and cell-culture infrastructure for many investigators. Precision Medicine
- She continues to direct the Yan Lab, which focuses on intestinal stem cells, regeneration, and organoid-based approaches to understanding and treating human disease. Yan Lab Columbia