Oscar M. Rodriguez Fiallos

Oscar graduated from the City College of New York (CCNY) with a degree in Biology. Upon graduation, he joined the laboratory of Robert Schwabe at Columbia University’s Department of Medicine, where he worked on liver injury and regeneration. In the Schwabe Lab, Oscar applied a range of molecular and cell biology approaches to study hepatocyte function and the interactions between liver cell types, helping to develop hepatocyte organoid cultures to model liver pathophysiology.

Following his work in the Schwabe Lab, Oscar joined the Columbia University Organoid & Cell Culture Core (OCCC). There, he developed extensive expertise in 3D tissue culture, organoid technology, and disease modeling. At the OCCC, Oscar established and maintained organoid and primary culture systems derived from human clinical specimens, xenograft tumors, and genetically engineered mouse models, while creating a comprehensive biobank and database to monitor culture parameters such as growth kinetics, doubling time, and organoid formation rate.

In the Victor Lab, Oscar leads efforts to scale and refine the lab’s brain organoid production pipeline, optimizing culture conditions to enhance reproducibility, structural organization, and functional maturity. His work focuses on developing advanced co-culture systems that integrate brain organoids with specialized barrier cell types, enabling more physiologically relevant models of neuroimmune communication. Through this research, Oscar is helping to establish next-generation human brain models that connect molecular mechanisms of inflammation to circuit-level outcomes, contributing to a deeper understanding of how complex cellular interactions shape neural function in health and disease.

Email: Oscar.rodriguezfiallos@mssm.edu

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/oscar-m-rodriguez-fiallos-a109572bb