Heidi Kletzien

Aging is a gradual and irreversible pathophysiological process that represents a critical risk factor for the development of swallowing disorders and head and neck cancers. The focus of the Kletzien Lab is to elucidate putative processes contributing to the age-related decline in the regenerative potential of head and neck tissue stem cells, to identify cell-intrinsic mechanisms of stem cell aging and extrinsic environmental cues that lead to clonal outgrowth and head and neck cancer initiation, and to develop novel, targeted treatments using cell- and tissue-based gene therapies for the rescue, prevention, and early treatment of age-associated diseases affecting head and neck tissues.

We take an integrative, translative, and multi-omics approach using novel preclinical models, genetic engineering tools, and primary head and neck tissue/tumor samples to uncover and reveal fundamental processes driving these age-related disorders and diseases. This work is critical to discovering key mechanistic drivers of age-related tissue dysfunction and head and neck cancer, and will also establish new, much-needed in vivo models of head and neck cancer tumorigenesis.