Use of human iPS cells to study spinal muscular atrophy
Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is one of the most common autosomal recessive disorders that cause infant mortality. SMA is caused by loss of the Survival of Motor Neuron (SMN) protein,…
Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is one of the most common autosomal recessive disorders that cause infant mortality. SMA is caused by loss of the Survival of Motor Neuron (SMN) protein,…
Stem cells, including human embryonic stem cells, provide extraordinary new opportunities to model human diseases and may serve as platforms for drug screening and validation. Especially with the ever-improving effective…
Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is the major cause of birth defects, almost all of which are neuronal in origin. Approximately 1% of newborns are infected, and of the 13% that are…
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are a group of neurodevelopmental diseases that occur in as many as 1 in 150 children in the United States. Three hallmarks of autism are dysfunctional…
Over twenty human genetic diseases are caused by expansion of simple DNA sequences composed of repeats of three nucleotides (such as CAG, CTG, CGG and GAA) within essential genes. These…
Human embryonic and patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cells have the remarkable capacity to differentiate into many cell-types, including neurons, thus enabling the modeling of human neurological diseases in vitro, and…
A major goal of stem cell research is to generate various functional human cell types that can be used to better understand how these cells work and to use them…
The goal of this research is to utilize novel research tools to investigate the molecular mechanisms that cause Parkinson’s disease (PD). The proposed work builds on previous funding from CIRM…
Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have tremendous potential for patient-specific cell therapies, which bypasses immune rejection issues and ethical concerns for embryonic stem cells (ESCs). However, to fully harness the…
There is a group of brain diseases that are caused by functional abnormalities. The brains of patients afflicted with these diseases which include autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, depression, and mania…