Human Stem Cell Use: Embryonic Stem Cell
Stem cell tolerance through the use of engineered antigen-specific regulatory T cells
Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) occurs as a consequence of uncontrolled immune activation, culminating in the destruction of insulin-producing beta-cells. Efforts to prevent or reverse diabetes have been limited by the lack of safe and effective immunotherapies coupled with the inability to restore insulin producing beta-cells. We believe proper immune control to self-tissues to be a […]
Stem cell differentiation to thymic epithelium for inducing tolerance to stem cells
The thymus is an organ that plays a key role in controlling immune responses and immune tolerance. The thymus promotes immune tolerance by deleting and removing self-reactive T cells from the immune system. In addition, the thymus also helps drive the production of important suppressor T cell populations like regulatory T cells that also control […]
Generation of disease models for neurodegenerative disorders in hESCs by gene targeting
The ability to target a specific locus in the mouse genome and to alter it in a specific fashion has fundamentally changed experimental design and made mice the preeminent model for studying human diseases . However, pathogenesis in humans have unique pathways that may not be revealed by only using mouse or other animal models. […]
Discovery of adhesion ligands for pluripotent human stem cells
We have assembled a team of investigators with complementary expertise in applying the state-of-the-art “one-bead-one-compound” (OBOC) combinatorial library methods to identify synthetic chemical molecules that bind to unique receptors (protein molecules) on the surface of human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells. In this technology, stem cells will be mixed with huge number […]
Development of the Theracyte Cellular Encapsulation System for Delivery of human ES Cell-derived Pancreatic Islets and Progenitors.
There are several challenges to the successful implementation of a cellular therapy for insulin dependent diabetes derived from Human Embryonic Stem Cells (hESCs). Among these are the development of functional insulin-producing cells, a clinical delivery method that eliminates the need for chronic immunosuppression, and assurance that hESC-derived tumors do not develop in the patient. We […]
Novel Separation of Stem Cell Subpopulations
The inability to separate stem cells and their differentiated progeny accurately, easily, and rapidly undermines progress in the stem cell field. Traditional separation of living cells into subpopulations relies on techniques that utilize characteristic cell surface markers, but specific markers are severely limited or lacking altogether for many stem cell populations. Without ways to discriminate […]
Magnetic Particle Imaging: A Novel Ultra-sensitive Imaging Scanner for Tracking Stem Cells In Vivo
We aim to develop, test and validate a new, sensitive and affordable scanner for tracking the location of injected cells in humans and animals. This new scanning method, called Magnetic Particle Imaging, will ultimately be used to track the location and viability of stem cells within the human body. It could solve one of the […]
Development of Baculoviral Vectors for Gene Editing of Human Stem Cells
Stem cells are powerful undifferentiated cells that are able to both regenerate themselves and differentiate into different mature cell types, such as lung cells or liver cells. The ability to edit stem cell genomes is useful for both understanding stem cells at a fundamental level as well as for practical and therapeutic purposes, such as […]
Development of Suspension Adaptation, Scale-up cGMP Banking and Cell Characterization Technologies for hESC Lines
hESCs represent an important source of cell therapies in regenerative medicine and the study of early human development. A number of hESC-based therapies are nearing clinical trials. To bring these to clinical trials requires the scale-up production, or “banking”, of large numbers of the desired hESC cell. The current lack of large scale hESC culture […]
Optimization in the Identification, Selection and Induction of Maturation of Subtypes of Cardiomyocytes derived from Human Embryonic Stem Cells
Cardiovascular diseases remain the major cause of death in the western world. Stem and progenitor cell-derived cardiomyocytes (SPC-CMs) hold great promise for the myocardial repair. However, most of SPC-CMs displayed heterogeneous and immature electrophysiological phenotypes with substantial automaticity. Implanting these electrically immature and inhomogeneous CMs to the hearts would be arrhythmogenic and deleterious. Further optimization […]