Stephen Duncan received his PhD for working on vaccinia virus from Oxford University in 1992. He then moved to Rockefeller University in New York City to undertake a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. James Darnell. He relocated to the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee in 1997 to establish an independent laboratory as an Assistant Professor and moved through the ranks to become the Marcus Professor of Cell Biology, Neurobiology and Anatomy. In 2007, he accepted a position as the founding Director of MCW’s Program in Regenerative Medicine. In 2015, Dr. Duncan relocated to the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, where he is currently the Chair of the Department of Regenerative Medicine and Cell Biology.
Research in the Duncan Lab focuses on the use of mice and stem cells to understand the contribution of transcription factors to embryonic development and function of the liver. His group has developed technologies to control the differentiation of pluripotent stem cells into cells with hepatocyte characteristics. In addition to using such cells to understand cell differentiation, his group has exploited them to model inborn errors in hepatic metabolism and as a platform for drug discovery.
