# Directing Cell Fate Along the Intestinal Enteroendocrine Lineage

> **NIH NIH DP2** · COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES · 2020 · $2,430,000

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
Body weight and energy balance are tightly regulated by complex hormonal interplay of the gut and the central
nervous system to control appetite and energy expenditure. Gut hormone signals from intestinal enteroendocrine
cells (EECs) can either be orexigenic, enhancing hunger and promoting food intake, or anorexigenic, promoting
satiety to inhibit food intake. Gut hormonal signaling dysfunction is implicated in obesity, a disease with enormous
public health burden in the US and worldwide. Understanding this dysfunction will provide critical insight to the
pathogenesis of obesity and its co-morbidities, and ultimately provide novel avenues to ameliorate it.
 The gastrointestinal tract is the largest endocrine organ and harbors the greatest number of hormone-
producing cells in the body. This system holds vast potential for our ability to understand, and possibly manipulate,
hormone signaling dysfunction. However, our understanding of hormones and the EECs that produce them
remain poor. The intestinal epithelium is a rapidly self-renewing tissue and contains rare, heterogeneous EECs
scattered throughout that produce a variety of hormones. EECs are generated from the sequential differentiation
of multi-potent actively proliferating intestinal stem cells residing in the intestinal crypts that continuously produce
replacement cells to support cellular turnover of the epithelium. The evolving understanding of cellular lineage
hierarchy upon intestinal stem cell differentiation suggest that, rather than exogenous hormone delivery to
patients, we may be able to pharmacologically manipulate the intestinal stem/progenitor cell state to guide their
in vivo lineage output toward production of distinct EEC subtypes or to control the release of their hormone
products for therapeutic applications. Here we will define the intestinal EEC lineage at single-cell resolution,
including its diverse and discrete subtypes, and study how they are inter-related, to exponentially advance
existing knowledge of these cells. We will also identify and functionally dissect the pathways that enforce specific
EEC subtypes that would be therapeutically beneficial. This a high-risk/high-reward proposal with potential for
direct translation to treatment of obesity and diabetes, which are global-scale human diseases.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10002751
- **Project number:** 1DP2DK128801-01
- **Recipient organization:** COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES
- **Principal Investigator:** Kelley Yan
- **Activity code:** DP2 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $2,430,000
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-09-15 → 2025-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10002751

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10002751, Directing Cell Fate Along the Intestinal Enteroendocrine Lineage (1DP2DK128801-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-06-01 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10002751. Licensed CC0.

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