Disease Focus: Alzheimer's Disease
Neuroprotection to treat Alzheimer’s: a new paradigm using human central nervous system cells
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an incurable disorder that affects memory, social interaction and the ability to perform everyday activities. In the USA alone, the number of AD patients aged 65 and older has surpassed 5 million and that number may triple by 2050. Annual health care costs have been estimated to exceed 172 billion dollars, […]
A CIRM Disease Team to Develop Allopregnanolone for Prevention and Treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is now a nation-wide epidemic and California is at the epicenter of the epidemic. One-tenth of all people in the United States diagnosed with AD live in California. In the US, 5.4 million people have AD and another American develops AD every 69 seconds. No therapeutic strategies exist to prevent or treat […]
Developing a method for rapid identification of high-quality disease specific hIPSC lines
Elucidating how genetic variation contributes to disease susceptibility and drug response requires human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell (hIPSC) lines from many human patients. Yet, current methods of hIPSC generation are labor-intensive and expensive. Thus, a cost-effective, non-labor intensive set of methods for hIPSC generation and characterization is essential to bring the translational potential of hIPSC […]
ES-Derived Cells for the Treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia in the elderly, affecting over 5 million people in the US alone. Boosting immune responses to beta-Amyloid (Aβ) has proven beneficial in mouse models and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients. Vaccinating Alzheimer’s mice with Aβ improves cognitive performance and lessens pathological features within the brain, such as […]
ES-Derived Cells for the Treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia in the elderly, affecting over 5 million people in the US alone. Boosting immune responses to beta-Amyloid (Aβ) has proven beneficial in mouse models and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients. Vaccinating Alzheimer’s mice with Aβ improves cognitive performance and lessens pathological features within the brain, such as […]
Neural Stem Cells as a Developmental Candidate to Treat Alzheimer Disease
Alzheimer disease (AD), the most common cause of dementia among the elderly and the third leading cause of death, presently afflicts over 5 million people in the USA, including over 500,000 in California. Age is the major risk factor, with 5% of the population over age 65 affected, with the incidence doubling every 5 years […]
Defining the Isoform-Specific Effects of Apolipoprotein E on the Development of iPS Cells into Functional Neurons in Vitro and in Vivo
GOALS We propose to determine the effects of different forms of apoE on the development of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells into functional neurons. In Aim 1, iPS cells will be generated from skin cells of adult knock-in (KI) mice expressing different forms of human apoE and in humans with different apoE genotypes. In Aim […]
Using Human Embryonic Stem Cells to Understand and to Develop New Therapies for Alzheimer’s Disease
Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a progressive incurable disease that robs people of their memory and ability to think and reason. It is emotionally, and sometimes financially devastating to families that must cope when a parent or spouse develops AD. Unfortunately, however, we currently lack an understanding of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) that is sufficient to drive […]
Development of human ES cell lines as a model system for Alzheimer disease drug discovery
Alzheimer disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that currently affects over 4.5 million Americans. By the middle of the century, the prevalence of AD in the USA is projected to almost quadruple. As current therapies do not abate the underlying disease process, it is very likely that AD will continue to be a clinical, […]
Generation of forebrain neurons from human embryonic stem cells
The goal of this proposal is to generate forebrain neurons from human embryonic stem cells. Our general strategy is to sequentially expose ES cells to signals that lead to differentiation along a neuronal lineage, and to select for cells that display characteristics of forebrain neurons. These cells would then be used in transplantation experiments to […]