The advent of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) has offered enormous potential for regenerative medicine and for basic understanding of human biology. On the one hand, hESCs can be turned…
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the most frequent neurodegenerative movement disorder caused by damage of dopamine-producing nerve cells (DA neuron) in patient brain. The main symptoms of PD are age-dependent tremors…
More than 600 disorders afflict the nervous system. Common disorders such as stroke, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease and autism are well-known. Many other neurological disorders are rare, known only to the…
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…
This proposal describes a sharply-focused, timely, and rigorous effort to develop new therapies for the treatment of injuries of the Central Nervous System (CNS). The underlying hypothesis for this proposal…
A promising approach to alleviating the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease is to transplant healthy dopaminergic neurons into the brains of these patients. Due to the large number of transplant neurons…
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…
A variety of stem cells exist in humans throughout life and maintain their ability to divide and change into multiple cell types. Different types of adult derived stem cells occur…
Many mental disorders are closely associated with problems that occur during brain development in early life. For instance, by 2 years of age, autistic children have larger brains than normal…
Our understanding of the effect of immunosuppressive agents on stem cell proliferation and differentiation in the central nervous system is limited. Indeed, even the necessity for long-term immunosuppression to promote…
