David J Klumpp, PhD

Assistant Professor of Urology
Feinberg School of Medicine

Research Interests:
The laboratory of Dr. David Klumpp is interested in bladder inflammation and basic bladder biology. Bladder inflammation can be acute, as in the case of urinary tract infections (UTIs), or chronic. One major focus of the lab is the pathogenesis of urinary tract infections (UTIs). UTIs are the second most common infectious disease, behind only respiratory tract infections, and are caused by uropathogenic E. coli (UPEC). More recently, his lab has begun to develop novel models of key urogenital systems to permit the biochemical and molecular characterization of pathogenesis by uropathogenic E. coli. These models incorporate immortalized human urogenital cell lines and in vitro epithelial differentiation techniques that can be used to generate synthetic 3-dimensional tissues.

A recent asset to Dr. Klumpp’s research program has been the development of immortalized human genitourinary (GU) cell lines. These GU cell lines maintain the morphology of normal primary GU epithelial cells in culture yet offer extended lifespan in culture. One important characteristic of normal epithelial cells is their capacity to enter a differentiation program that results in a mature cellular phenotype. This differentiation process is characterized by increased expression of differentiation markers, whereas a common feature of cell lines established from carcinomas is a loss of differentiation marker expression.

To test the capacity of their immortalized GU cell lines to undergo epithelial differentiation, they have grown synthetic tissues and examined morphology and marker expression. An immortalized vaginal cell line formed tissue that had the stratified, squamous appearance of normal vaginal epithelium. Similarly, an immortalized urothelial cell line formed tissue that resembled urothelium. This synthetic urothelium was also found to express a terminal differentiation marker on the superficial surface of the synthetic tissue, like normal urothelium. These results suggest that their immortalized cell lines retain the capacity to undergo differentiation and thus are likely to represent faithful models of human GU cells. His laboratory will continue to exploit these models for their studies of bladder biology and pathogenesis.