Grant Award Details
- The Bridges Program provides in classroom coursework and labwork coupled with an internship in a stem cell-focused lab [usually off campus] to students predominantly in the Cal State System or similar institutions.
Grant Application Details
- Bridges to Stem Cell Research
Our Bridges to Stem Cell Research program will have 7 components: 1) Partnership with two local community colleges to diversify the potential population of interns, 2) Internships at three host institutions, one a public research university, one a private research institute, and one a commercial company. This will provide research experiences that occur in diverse environments, each with their own institutional emphasis. 3) Students will receive academic course credit that will allow them to continue earning credit towards their degrees while conducting their internship research. 4) Development of cell culture courses on the student’s campuses to provide them with training prior to entering their internship. 5) Development of a Stem Cell Techniques training course at a Shared Research Laboratory to provide advanced training in embryonic stem cells prior to entering their internship. 6) Development of two general education course modules to educate the broader population in stem cells. 7) Mentorship of students, including academic counseling, preparation for application to advanced programs, and opportunities for presentation of research results. Over the three year period of the grant, we will train 20 undergraduate students and 6 Master's level graduate students. Because of our strong base in the underrepresented Hispanic population, along with other underrepresented minorities, women, and students with disabilities, our Stem Cell Internship program promises to not only provide appropriately qualified graduates in the relevant disciplines, but to provide diversity in these graduates as well. Our goal is to prepare these students for acceptance into an advanced educational program or entry into the stem cell workforce. We are partnering with two local community college campuses to further diversify the pool of internship candidates and to broaden the impact of this program on students in this area of California. A new component in the curriculum at each campus will be to develop courses to allow students to gain both a theoretical and practical background in tissue culture, along with an introduction to stem cell research. For host internship sites, we will send students to stem cell laboratories at three institutions; one is a public research university, one a private research institute, and one a private company. One of our host campuses is a Shared Research Laboratory recipient and will develop a stem cell techniques laboratory course using human embryonic stem cells. All students in our program will take this course prior to their 6-month (undergrad) or 12-month (grad) internship. To educate the broader student population, we will develop modules that discuss stem cells, including the ethics of stem cell research, within two General Education courses. These courses reach approximately 1500 students each year.
The passage of Proposition 71 – Cures for Californians has provided a landmark opportunity to pursue the development of stem cells to provide therapeutic treatments. California will need highly trained technicians in addition to the senior scientists in order to carry out the basic and applied research. Our Bridges to Stem Cell Research proposal will assist in meeting the goal of developing a well trained and diverse workforce. Because of our strong base in the underrepresented Hispanic population, along with other underrepresented minorities, women, and students with disabilities, our Stem Cell Internship program promises to not only provide appropriately qualified graduates in the relevant disciplines, but to provide diversity in these graduates as well. To educate the broader student population, we will develop modules that discuss stem cells, including the ethics of stem cell research, within two General Education courses. Our Stem Cell Internship program will have 7 components: 1) Partnership with two local community colleges to diversify the potential population of interns, 2) Internships at three host institutions, one a public research university, one a private research institute, and one a commercial company. This will provide research experiences that occur in diverse environments, each with their own institutional emphasis. 3) Students will receive academic course credit that will allow them to continue earning credit towards their degrees while conducting their internship research. 4) Development of cell culture courses on the student’s campuses to provide them with training prior to entering their internship. 5) Development of a Stem Cell Techniques training course at a Shared Research Laboratory to provide advanced training in embryonic stem cells prior to entering their internship. 6) Development of two general education course modules to educate the broader population in stem cells. 7) Mentorship of students, including academic counseling, preparation for application to advanced programs, and opportunities for presentation of research results. Over the three year period of the grant, we will train 20 undergraduate students and 6 Master's level graduate students. Our goal is to prepare these students for acceptance into an advanced educational program or entry into the stem cell workforce.
Publications
- Nicotine Tob Res (2020) Chemical Elements in Electronic Cigarette Solvents and Aerosols Inhibit Mitochondrial Reductases and Induce Oxidative Stress. (PubMed: 33320250)
- Am J Physiol Gastrointest Liver Physiol (2020) Broad-spectrum antibiotics alter the microbiome, increase intestinal fxr, and decrease hepatic steatosis in zebrafish short bowel syndrome. (PubMed: 32597709)
- Am J Physiol Gastrointest Liver Physiol (2019) Wnt signaling inhibition by monensin results in a period of Hippo pathway activation during intestinal adaptation in zebrafish. (PubMed: 30896968)
- Toxicol Appl Pharmacol (2019) Video-based kinetic analysis of calcification in live osteogenic human embryonic stem cell cultures reveals the developmentally toxic effect of Snus tobacco extract. (PubMed: 30468815)
- Methods Mol Biol (2018) Human Pluripotent Stem Cells to Assess Developmental Toxicity in the Osteogenic Lineage. (PubMed: 29896689)
- Am J Stem Cells (2018) Short-term hypoxia improves early cardiac progenitor cell function in vitro. (PubMed: 29531855)
- Stem Cells Dev (2017) SLC7A11 Overexpression in Glioblastoma Is Associated with Increased Cancer Stem Cell-Like Properties. (PubMed: 28610554)
- Stem Cell Res Ther (2017) Lineage- and developmental stage-specific mechanomodulation of induced pluripotent stem cell differentiation. (PubMed: 28962663)
- Transplant Direct (2017) A Hyper-Crosslinked Carbohydrate Polymer Scaffold Facilitates Lineage Commitment and Maintains a Reserve Pool of Proliferating Cardiovascular Progenitors. (PubMed: 28573188)
- Acta Biomater (2017) Anodization of magnesium for biomedical applications - Processing, characterization, degradation and cytocompatibility. (PubMed: 28818688)
- Dev Neurosci (2017) Susceptibility-Weighted Imaging Identifies Iron-Oxide-Labeled Human Neural Stem Cells: Automated Computational Detection. (PubMed: 28343216)
- Stem Cell Res (2016) ROCK inhibitor primes human induced pluripotent stem cells to selectively differentiate towards mesendodermal lineage via epithelial-mesenchymal transition-like modulation. (PubMed: 27591478)
- Mol Cancer Res (2016) Increased Expression of System xc- in Glioblastoma Confers an Altered Metabolic State and Temozolomide Resistance. (PubMed: 27658422)
- Nucleic Acids Res (2016) Tetratricopeptide repeat factor XAB2 mediates the end resection step of homologous recombination. (PubMed: 27084940)
- PLoS One (2016) Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) Bioavailability Regulates Angiogenesis and Intestinal Stem and Progenitor Cell Proliferation during Postnatal Small Intestinal Development. (PubMed: 26978773)
- PLoS One (2016) Sequestration of Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) Induces Late Restrictive Lung Disease. (PubMed: 26863115)
- Tissue Eng Part A (2016) Human and Murine Tissue-Engineered Colon Exhibit Diverse Neuronal Subtypes and Can Be Populated by Enteric Nervous System Progenitor Cells When Donor Colon Is Aganglionic. (PubMed: 26414777)
- J Invest Dermatol (2016) Activating Hair Follicle Stem Cells via R-spondin2 to Stimulate Hair Growth. (PubMed: 27109869)
- Toxicol Sci (2016) From the Cover: Thirdhand Cigarette Smoke Causes Stress-Induced Mitochondrial Hyperfusion and Alters the Transcriptional Profile of Stem Cells. (PubMed: 27255386)
- Dev Biol (2015) Differential regenerative capacity of neonatal mouse hearts after cryoinjury. (PubMed: 25555840)
- Mol Ther Methods Clin Dev (2015) A novel, long-lived, and highly engraftable immunodeficient mouse model of mucopolysaccharidosis type I. (PubMed: 26052536)