Rogerio M Castilho
Dentist and cell biologist who showed, as a postdoc at the US National Institutes of Health, that Wnt signalling wears out skin stem cells through mTOR and that rapamycin can prevent it, and whose University of Michigan lab now studies how histone marks control epithelial healing and treatment resistance in head and neck cancer
Professor of Dentistry (promotion recommended 2024), Associate Professor with tenure (2018–2024) and Assistant Professor (2010–2018), Department of Periodontics and Oral Medicine, School of Dentistry, University of Michigan · postdoctoral fellow, National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, NIH (about seven years) · PhD (2003) and MS (2000), University of Sao Paulo · DDS, Pontifical Catholic University of Campinas (1995)
In the Atlas paper (CAS2009), Rogerio Castilho and colleagues in J. Silvio Gutkind's group at the US National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research looked at the stem cells that renew the skin and hair. They kept the Wnt signal, which tells these stem cells to divide, switched on in mice. At first the hair grew fast, but soon the stem cells stopped working, became senescent (a state where cells stop dividing for good) and the hair was lost. The cause was mTOR: Wnt kept mTOR active, and when the mice were given rapamycin, which blocks mTOR, the stem cells kept going. The study is in mice and in cultured cells, and it helped connect mTOR to the way stem cells run out with age.
Castilho trained as a dentist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Campinas in Brazil (DDS 1995) and earned an MS and a PhD in oral pathology at the University of Sao Paulo (2003), where he also taught surgical and experimental pathology. He then spent nearly seven years as a postdoctoral fellow at the NIDCR, part of the National Institutes of Health, studying how the lining of the mouth and skin stays healthy, heals wounds and turns into cancer.
He joined the University of Michigan School of Dentistry in 2010 and was recommended for promotion to full professor in 2024. His lab studies the histone code, the chemical marks on the proteins that package DNA, in tissue injury, chronic inflammation and cancer. It asks how histone acetylation controls healing and stem cell function, and how head and neck tumours, including salivary gland cancers, use these marks to resist chemotherapy and radiation. The group also tests drugs that change these marks, and works on better healing of burns.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2009 | A | mTOR mediates Wnt-induced epidermal stem cell exhaustion and aging CAS2009 First author: showed in mice that constant Wnt signalling exhausts epidermal stem cells through mTOR and that rapamycin prevents this stem cell loss. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 1
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Rogerio M Castilho.
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- J. Silvio Gutkind Showed that persistent mTOR activation exhausts epidermal stem cells and accelerates skin ageing, and targets PI3K–mTOR signalling in head-and-neck cancer, including to make tumours respond to immunotherapy
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