News & Updates

Sisira Surendran joins the lab as Project Associate I. She will be working on ongoing projects in the lab on the female genitourinary tract. Welcome!

Shourishree Sit who had joined us for the summer completed her summer internship in the lab under the INSA SRFP. Shourishree worked on differences in cell architecture and stemness between the proximal and distal urethra.

Shreya who was with us for the summer completed her final seminar for the SuRF internship today. She optimized protocols for whole tissue staining and clearing to investigate neural and epithelial remodeling during inflammation.

Diya attended ISSCR 2026 to present a poster on urethral organoids. inStem made its presence known at the event with a booth displaying our new initiatives and acheivements. inStem also sponsored the plenary session I where Nobel Laureate Dr. Shinya Yamanka delivered a lecture.

Dr. Diya Binoy Joseph was promoted to Assistant Professor at BRIC-inStem effective July 1, 2026

Congratulations to Aparna Mandal for winning a best poster award at Immunocon 2026 for her work on the immune response of the female urethra to a urinary tract infection.

The video protocol for our JoVE Methods paper is now online. This protocol presents an optimized method for isolating the epithelial lining of the adult female mouse urethra for downstream analyses, including flow cytometry, immunostaining, and organoid culture. Methods yielded enriched, viable urethral epithelial cells, as evidenced by flow cytometry analysis, whole-mount imaging, and efficient organoid formation.