Dr Bon-Kyoung Koo

Dr. Bon-Kyoung Koo is an experienced mouse geneticist actively employing the emerging organoid culture technology to study stem cell maintenance and activation in the mouse and human intestine and colon. Following his PhD in the laboratory of Prof. Young-Yun Kong at POSTECH, Dr. Koo joined the group of Prof. Hans Clevers at the Hubrecht Institute, Netherlands in 2009. Here he witnessed the first establishment of the Lgr5+ cell-derived intestinal organoid culture system. In the following years Dr. Koo has utilised this novel culture system to perform sophisticated gene correction with CRISPR/Cas9, to unravel the molecular regulation of adult stem cells and to prove the stem cell properties of a Troy+, quiescent reserve stem cell population in the stomach. After first group leader position at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute (2013-17), he moved his group to IMBA. Currently, his group focuses on clonal dynamics of adult epithelial stem cells both in homeostasis and during injury mediated repair.