Disease Focus: Neurological Disorders
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 […]
Genetic Encoding Novel Amino Acids in Embryonic Stem Cells for Molecular Understanding of Differentiation to Dopamine Neurons
Embryonic stem cells have the capacity to self-renew and differentiate into other cell types. Understanding how this is regulated on the molecular level would enable us to manipulate the process and guide stem cells to generate specific types of cells for safe transplantation. However, complex networks of intracellular cofactors and external signals from the environment […]
Molecular mechanisms involved in adult neural stem cell maintenance
The adult brain contains a pool of stem cells, termed adult neural stem cells, that could be used for regenerative purposes in diseases that affect the nervous system. The goal of this proposal is to understand the mechanisms that promote the maintenance of adult neural stem cells as an organism ages. Understanding the factors that […]
Developmental Candidates for Cell-Based Therapies for Parkinson’s Disease (PD)
Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a devastating disorder, stealing vitality from vibrant, productive adults & draining our health care dollars. It is also an excellent model for studying other neurodegenerative conditions. We have discovered that human neural stem cells (hNSCs) may exert a significant beneficial impact in the most authentic, representative, & predictive animal model of […]
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 […]
Sustained siRNA production from human MSC to treat Huntingtons Disease and other neurodegenerative disorders
One in every ten thousand people in the USA have Huntington’s Disease, and it impacts many more. Multiple generations within a family can inherit the disease, resulting in escalating health care costs and draining family resources. This highly devastating and fatal disease touches all races and socioeconomic levels, and there are currently no cures. Screening […]
Using patient-specific iPSC derived dopaminergic neurons to overcome a major bottleneck in Parkinson’s disease research and drug discovery
The goals of this study are to develop patient-specific induced pluripotent cell lines (iPSCs) from patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) with defined mutations and sporadic forms of the disease. Recent groundbreaking discoveries allow us now to use adult human skin cells, transduce them with specific genes, and generate cells that exhibit characteristics of embryonic stem […]
Induction of immune tolerance after spinal grafting of human ES-derived neural precursors
Previous clinical studies have shown that grafting of human fetal brain tissue into the CNS of adult recipients can be associated with long-term (more then 10 years) graft survival even after immunosuppression is terminated. These clinical data represent in part the scientific base for the CNS to be designated as an immune privilege site, i.e., […]
Role of HLA in neural stem cell rejection using humanized mice
One of the key issues in stem cell transplant biology is solving the problem of transplant rejection. Despite over three decades of research in human embryonic stem cells, little is known about the factors governing immune system tolerance to grafts derived from these cells. In order for the promise of embryonic stem cell transplantation for […]
Role of HLA in neural stem cell rejection using humanized mice
One of the key issues in stem cell transplant biology is solving the problem of transplant rejection. Despite over three decades of research in human embryonic stem cells, little is known about the factors governing immune system tolerance to grafts derived from these cells. In order for the promise of embryonic stem cell transplantation for […]