Stage of Program: Candidate Discovery (DISC2, some 1.0 projects)
Curing Hematological Diseases
The primary aim of this project is to develop treatments for incurable diseases of the blood and immune system. X-linked Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (X-SCID) and Fanconi anemia (FA) are two blood diseases where mutations in a single gene results in the disease. XSCID, more commonly known as the “bubble boy” disease, is characterized by a […]
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 […]
Development of an hES Cell-Based Assay System for Hepatocyte Differentiation Studies and Predictive Toxicology Drug Screening
Drug-induced liver toxicity, including that from FDA-approved drugs, is the leading cause of liver failure in the US. One of the biggest road blocks to testing drug-induced liver toxicity prior to clinical studies or release of the drug into the market is the absence of a good model of human drug metabolism in the liver. […]
Building Cardiac Tissue from Stem Cells and Natural Matrices
Congestive heart failure afflicts 4.8 million people, with 400,000 new cases each year. Myocardial infarction (MI), also known as a “heart attack”, leads to a loss of cardiac tissue and impairment of left ventricular function. Because the heart does not contain a significant number of multiplying stem, precursor, or reserve cells, it is unable to […]
A Novel Microenvironment-Mediated Functional Skeletal Muscle from Human Embryonic Stem Cells and their In Vivo Engraftment
Muscle wasting is a serious clinical problem associated with a number of diseases and health conditions, affecting individuals of all ages. Muscular dystrophy (MD) is a form of muscle wasting disease resulting from genetic mutations. Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is the most common form of MD that limits motility and life expectancy of children. It […]
Safe, efficient creation of human induced pluripotent stem cells without the use of retroviruses
Embryonic stem cells open up exciting new prospects for medicine, because they can differentiate into any tissue in the body. Therefore, they have the potential to be used to repair faulty tissues in diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and neural disorders. Furthermore, stem cells can be corrected by gene therapy and transplanted, in order to […]
An in vitro and in vivo comparison among three different human hepatic stem cell populations.
Because there is still considerable morbidity and mortality associated with the process of transplantation, and because more than a thousand people die each year while on the liver transplantation list, it is evident that improved and safer liver transplantation would be valuable, as would approaches that provide for an increased number of transplantations in a […]
Prospective isolation of hESC-derived hematopoietic and cardiomyocyte stem cells
The capacity of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) to perpetuate themselves indefinitely in culture and to differentiate to all cell types of the body has lead to numerous studies that aim to isolate therapeutically relevant cells for the benefit of patients, and also to study how genetic diseases develop. However, hESCs can cause tumors called […]
hESC-Derived Motor Neurons For the Treatment of Cervical Spinal Cord Injury
Cervical spinal cord injuries result in a loss of upper limb function because the cells within the spinal cord that control upper limb muscles are destroyed. The goal of this research program is to create a renewable human source of these cells, to restore upper limb function in both acute and chronic spinal cord injuries. […]