About Dr. Kristy Red Horse

PROFESSOR of biology

DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY

INSTITUTE FOR STEM CELL BIOLOGY AND REGENERATIVE MEDICINE

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical institute

KREDHORS@STANFORD.EDU

Dr. Kristy Red-Horse is a Professor of Biology at Stanford University’s Department of Biology and Institute for Stem Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicine. She is also an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dr. Red-Horse attended high school in Benton, Arkansas where her love of biological systems was sparked by Mrs. Parnell’s biology class. She went on to attend the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, majoring in microbiology.

Not quite knowing what to do with her professional life following graduation, but feeling both the urge to continue her education and to explore other parts of the country, Dr. Red-Horse took an opportunity to perform a Master’s degree at San Francisco State University. This opportunity was made possible by the NIH’s Minority Biomedical Research Support Program (MBRS)-Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement Program (RISE), and was a dramatic turning point in her life (Thank you Dr. Frank Bayless!). Dr. Red-Horse fell in love with experiments and scientific research and has not looked back since.

Dr. Red-Horse is of Cherokee descent, the granddaughter of an elder and Professor of American Indian Studies. His social work research was dedicated to improving policies for Native American youth, establishing the importance of keeping extended families together and studying how community partnership is required to see benefits from such research. Dr. Red-Horse’s heritage and her own personal experiences give her great motivation for providing opportunities to young scientists from many different backgrounds and life histories.

Dr. Red-Horse’s Master’s research explored immune cell trafficking at the human maternal-fetal interface in Dr. Susan Fisher’s lab at the University of California, San Francisco. So enthralled by the biology of pregnancy, she decided to stay in the Fisher lab for her PhD research, which explored how the vasculature of the placenta incorporates within the uterine arterial network. Her work provided information about how the placenta targets arteries rather than veins and discovered that the uterus usually lacks a lymphatic vasculature until pregnancy when uterine lymphatics expand dramatically.

She spent some postdoctoral time at Genentech in the lab of Dr. Napoleone Ferrara, but the work of her lab was started during a postdoc at Stanford University with Dr. Mark Krasnow. There, Dr. Red-Horse identified the progenitors of coronary arteries in mouse hearts. In her own lab at Stanford, she and her team went on to explore many different aspects of how coronary arteries develop from these progenitors. The Red-Horse group also studies how coronaries regenerate and respond to injury, and devises methods for increasing their growth to enhance cardiac recovery.

For her pioneering work in cardiovascular and stem cell biology, Dr. Red-Horse has received awards such as the NIH Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00) and the Searle Scholar’s Award. She was also a New York Stem Cell Foundation—Robertson Investigator and received the Judah Folkman Award in vascular biology. In 2021, Dr. Red-Horse was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and in 2023 she was elected into the National Academy of Medicine.

When not working on the blood vessels, she is raising her two children, four chickens, and Labradoodle (noodles the poodles).