Dr. Flannigan was awarded a highly competitive Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute grant to study and understand the genetic regulation of individual cells in normal spermatogenesis and in male infertility, specifically among men that fail to produce sperm detectable in the ejaculate.
Dr. Flannigan will be using state-of-the-art single cell RNA sequencing to interrogate the genes produced in each individual cell and compare differences between infertile men and fertile men. Using intricate computer algorithms, Dr. Flannigan hopes to gain insight to differences in cell differentiation among infertile men to identify potential therapeutic targets for future treatments.