Disease Focus: Trauma
Cellular Therapies in Trauma and Critical Care Medicine: Forging New Frontiers
Cell Therapies in Trauma and Critical Care: Barriers in Translation from Pre-clinical to Clinical Development
Molecular regulation of stem cell potency
The field of stem cell biology as it applies to regenerative medicine requires a detailed understanding of what controls stem cell function. Our fundamental interest is in the molecular pathways that control how potent as a stem is in terms of its ability to make new tissues in response to injury and disease. We have […]
Neural restricted, FAC-sorted, human neural stem cells to treat traumatic brain injury
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) affects 1.4 million Americans a year; 175,000 in California. When the brain is injured, nerve cells near the site of injury die due to the initial trauma and interruption of blood flow. Secondary damage occurs as neighboring tissue is injured by the inflammatory response to the initial injury, leading to a […]
Identification of hESC-mediated molecular mechanism that positively regulates the regenerative capacity of post-natal tissues
The tissue regenerative capacity deteriorates with age in animals and in humans, leading to the loss of organ function, which is well exemplified in skeletal muscle, but is poorly understood in molecular terms. Our recent work uncovered that factors produced by human embryonic stem cells have a unique ability to enhance the regenerative responses of […]
Regulation of Stem Cell Fate in Bioengineered Arrays of Hydrogel Microwells
Stem cell biology, since its inception 30 years ago, has been hindered by our limited ability to observe and direct the decisions of individual stem cells. In the case of adult tissue-specific stem cells, such as those from blood, muscle or pancreas, the numbers available for clinical use are extremely limited, as in tissue culture […]
Mechanisms Underlying the Responses of Normal and Cancer Stem Cells to Environmental and Therapeutic Insults
Adult stem cells play an essential role in the maintenance of tissue homeostasis. Environmental and therapeutic insults leading to DNA damage dramatically impact stem cell functions and can lead to organ failure or cancer development. Yet little is known about the mechanisms by which adult stem cells respond to such insults by repairing their damaged […]
Skeletogenic Neural Crest Cells in Embryonic Development and Adult Regeneration of the Jaw
The goal of this proposal is to develop cell-based therapies that lead to the better healing of traumatic head injuries. Our first strategy will be to use genetics and embryology in zebrafish to identify factors that can convert human embryonic stem cells into replacement skeleton for the head and face. Remarkably, the genes and mechanisms […]
Immunology of neural stem cell fate and function
One of the most difficult yet ultimately rewarding goals in stem cell research is to repair damaged neural systems with newly generated neurons. Our work examining neuronal integration and survival in the postnatal and adult brain shows that incoming neurons are uniquely and exquisitely sensitive to the immune response and inflammation that is always present […]
New Chemokine-Derived Therapeutics Targeting Stem Cell Migration
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 is that chemokines and their receptors (particularly those involved in inflammatory cascades) actually play important roles in mediating the directed migration of human neural stem […]