Current Lab Members

Clemence Bonnet, MD
Assistant Project Scientist

"I graduated my MD in 2014 at Paris Descartes University, Paris, France. After finishing my fellowship in Cochin Hospital, Paris, France, I came to the Stein Eye Institute in 2018 to perform a research fellowship in cornea and anterior segment diseases. My areas of interests are corneal transplants and anterior segment imaging such as optical coherence tomography (AS OCT), and in vivo confocal microscopy (IVCM). I joined Prof. Deng's team in December 2019. I work on the phase one clinical trial studying the safety and feasibility of cultivated autologous limbal stem cells as an innovative therapy for limbal stem cell deficiency. My work is focused on enrolling new patients, collecting the clinical data by performing AS OCT, IVCM and impression cytology, and analyzing them. In the laboratory, my doctoral work is focus on investigating the role of the Wnt signaling pathway in the regulation of the limbal stem/progenitors cells."

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Sheyla Gonzalez, PhD
Associate Project Scientist

"I received my bachelor's degree in Cell Biology and Genetics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain) in 2006. I was then granted with a fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education to study the molecular regulation of the degradation of substrates by the proteasome at the IBMB-CSIC (Spain). In 2007, I was accepted in the Cell Biology PhD program at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain). I spent the first two years investigating the differential potential of mouse embryonic stem cell lines (ESC) established from isolated blastomeres at different embryonic stages. After receiving my Masters' degree in 2008, I continued to investigate deeper into the molecular mechanism of the regulation of stemness in vitro, by studying the effects of E-cadherin signaling in the derivation of mouse ESC lines. Having developed a background in stem cell biology, in 2011, I joined Dr. Sophie Deng's Laboratory. As a Postdoctoral Scholar, I have been investigating the role of Notch signaling in the regulation of human corneal epithelial stem cells (LSCs). In 2016, I transitioned into the role of Project Scientist at the Stein Eye Institute, where I bridge my basic research project with the management of the clinical project about the corneal surface regeneration by using in vitro expanded LSCs."

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John Y. Lee, MD
EyeSTAR Ophthalmology Residency/PhD Program

"I received my bachelor’s in Biochemistry and Cell Biology with a minor focus in Global Health Technologies at Rice University, where my research focused on enhancing efficacy of transplanted hPSC-derived cartilage constructs with pre-transplantation molecular pathway modulation. I then received my M.D. in 2021 from University of Miami where I focused my research in orbital oncology and utilizing bioinformatics software to predict/validate novel therapeutics for thyroid eye disease. Now, I am in the dual ophthalmology residency/PhD program at UCLA (EyeSTAR program) and am currently completing the PhD portion of my training. I am interested in leveraging the unique properties of CSSC-derived extracellular vesicles as a treatment for corneal scarring and engineering their structure to enhance therapeutic function. Outside the lab, I like to surf, play tennis, and golf."

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