Sunny S. K. Chan, PhD

University of Hartford

Dr. Sunny S. K. Chan is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Hartford and a stem cell biologist with over 15 years of research experience in stem cell biology, regenerative medicine, and tissue engineering. With a PhD in Pharmacology from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and dual undergraduate degrees in pharmacology and computer engineering from the University of British Columbia, Dr. Chan brings a multidisciplinary approach to biomedical research. His research has focused extensively on modeling early human development and disease through the use of pluripotent stem cells. Dr. Chan has developed advanced differentiation platforms to guide pluripotent stem cells toward cardiac and skeletal muscle lineages, enabling both mechanistic studies of development and translational applications. A major highlight of his work is the creation of a teratoma-based platform that generates engraftable muscle stem cells capable of regenerating damaged skeletal muscle in vivo—an innovation with therapeutic potential for Duchenne muscular dystrophy and other neuromuscular diseases. Additionally, Dr. Chan has pioneered the development of humanized disease models using patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), CRISPR-based genome editing, and single-cell transcriptomics to dissect the molecular pathogenesis of conditions such as congenital heart defects. His work bridges developmental biology and pharmacology by using these models to identify and validate new therapeutic targets and candidate drugs, particularly focusing on small molecules that modulate disease phenotypes. Dr. Chan’s research has been supported by grants from Regenerative Medicine Minnesota and the Greg Marzolf Jr Foundation and published in leading journals such as Nature Communications, Developmental Cell, and Cell Stem Cell. He is an active contributor to the peer-review process and scientific publishing, serving as a guest editor in Cells and a reviewer for journals including Stem Cell Reports and Cell Reports.