Welcome to the Garza Laboratory!

We are fascinated by questions of developmental biology, such as how a single cell has the instructions to build an entire organism.  How these embryonic developmental patterns are reinitiated in adults is a central question for regenerative medicine– and might eventually lead to insights on how to trigger the regrowth of a severed human limb, for example.

Our model system is the skin. To answer basic questions regarding stem cell biology and regeneration, we choose the skin because of its accessibility, the depth of current knowledge, and the complexity of epithelial/mesenchymal interactions in the context of relevant vasculature, nerves and hematopoietic cells.