Carolyn Sangokoya, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor
Pathology
School of Medicine

Dr. Sangokoya completed her medical and graduate training as part of the Medical Scientist Training Program at Duke University, where she discovered roles for microRNAs in oxidative stress and cellular iron homeostasis during her graduate studies with Jen-Tsan Ashley Chi in the Duke University Program in Genetics and Genomics. At UCSF, she completed her post-graduate training in Anatomic Pathology, Surgical Pathology, and Gastrointestinal/Hepatobiliary Pathology through the Department of Pathology Physician-Scientist Pathway, and postdoctoral studies in stem cell and regenerative biology with Robert Blelloch at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research, where she defined an axis of post-transcriptional control, endocytosis, and signal transduction essential for multiple aspects of stem cell biology. Dr. Sangokoya is a recipient of the K08 Career Development Award from the NIH/NICHD to decipher post-transcriptional regulation of cell fate in early mammalian development, as well as a recipient of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award for Medical Scientists.

The Sangokoya Lab focuses on how post-transcriptional regulatory networks (RNA + RNA-binding proteins) drive cell fate, function, and plasticity. The Sangokoya Lab uses functional and spatial transcriptomics, quantitative cell biology, gene-editing, and biosensors to understand the role of iron (and more) in basic cell biology, development, and disease. The Sangokoya Lab is developing functional ‘omic methods for understanding how post-transcriptional regulatory networks alter cell fate, function, and plasticity in 3D stem cell-based models and in mice. The Sangokoya Lab aims to use these findings to decode and further dissect cellular iron homeostasis in human cells and tissues in health, development, and disease. Finally, The Sangokoya Lab applies an RNA-based lens to better understand human liver tissue in health and disease, with long term goals to apply these findings to re-engineering cells for regenerative therapies and to innovating diagnostics in the age of precision-based medicine.

Dr. Sangokoya’s clinical interests are primarily in human liver pathobiology and diagnostics for precision-based medicine and regenerative therapies focused on steatotic liver disease and metabolic dysfunction associated steatohepatitis (MASH, formerly NASH), a leading cause of chronic liver disease, cirrhosis, and transplantation. As a stem cell biologist, her basic science research interests are in dissecting the molecular networks that fine-tune the wiring and re-wiring of cell fates in mammalian stem cell-based models, leveraging genome engineering, quantitative cell biology, RNA sequencing, imaging, and cytometry at single-cell resolution.

• Multimodal Spatial Transcriptomics Reveals the Developing Human Liver Niche at Single-Cell Resolution.
  Gastro hep advances 2026 Bailey M, Leon M, Rosso I, Sangokoya C
• Coordinate post-transcriptional regulation by microRNAs and RNA binding proteins is critical for early embryonic cell fate decisions.
  bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology 2025 Sangokoya C, Blelloch R
• The genetically encoded biosensor FEOX is a molecular gauge for cellular iron environment dynamics at single cell resolution.
  Scientific reports 2025 Sangokoya C
• Acidosis induces reprogramming of cellular metabolism to mitigate oxidative stress.
  Cancer & metabolism 2013 Lamonte G, Tang X, Chen JL, Wu J, Ding CK, Keenan MM, Sangokoya C, Kung HN, Ilkayeva O, Boros LG, Newgard CB, Chi JT
• Isolation and characterization of microRNAs of human mature erythrocytes.
  Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) 2010 Sangokoya C, LaMonte G, Chi JT
• Look to behavioral economics.
  Health affairs (Project Hope) 2008 Sangokoya C
• SNPkit: an efficient approach to systematic evaluation of candidate single nucleotide polymorphisms in public databases.
  BioTechniques 2002 Hao K, Niu T, Sangokoya C, Li J, Xu X