Education

• MS, University of Cologne, Germany, 1983 
• Dr. rer. nat., University of Cologne, Germany, 1988
• Postdoc, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 1988-1992

Research Interests

Dr. Kappen is the Principal Investigator of the Developmental Biology lab, whose research focus is research is to understand the mechanisms by which maternal disease and nutrition during pregnancy affects development of the embryo. Both diabetes and obesity in the mother are associated with greater risk for birth defects in the offspring, in particular defects in formation of the heart and impaired closure of the spine, which results in neural tube defects. Such malformations indicate that the embryo is exquisitely sensitive to perturbations in the uterine environment.

 

As pregnancies affected by maternal metabolic disease also appear to 'program' exposed individuals for health problems later in adult life, identification of the earliest molecular and cellular changes underlying this programming becomes necessary to be able to devise effective prevention strategies. Recent discoveries in the Developmental Biology lab have revealed that maternal diabetes affects the developing embryo by causing impaired cell migration during gastrulation, when the precursors of major organ systems are formed. Stem cells for heart development are normally among earliest cells to migrate after they are generated, and they travel particularly long distances. Closure of the neural tube also requires migration of large cohorts of cells. How maternal diabetes, or obesity, diminishes the migratory capacity of these cell populations is under active investigation.

 

Current work focuses the molecular causes for impaired cell migration at the single-cell level. Ongoing studies also examine the influences of maternal diet composition and vitamin supplementation, with the goal to understand how they could be harnessed for the prevention of birth defects and adult disease, ultimately through optimized nutrition.

 

The laboratory uses a wide variety of methodologies, including imaging, histological techniques, molecular and cell biological techniques, mouse genetics and genomics, bioinformatics, and machine learning approaches.


Department: Developmental Biology

Selected Publications

To be added