Year 1

Over the past decade, the potential for using stem cell transplantation as a therapy to treat neurological disorders and injury has been increasingly explored in animal models. Studies from our lab have shown that neural stem cell transplantation can improve cognitive deficits in mice resulting from extensive neuronal loss and protein aggregation, both hallmarks of Alzheimer’s Disease pathology. Our results support the justification for exploring the use of human derived stem cells for the treatment of Alzheimer’s patients.

During the past few months, we have begun studies aimed at taking human derived stem cells from the bench top to the bed side. To identify the best possible human stem cells to use in our future studies, we have conducted comparisons between a wide array of human stem cells and a mouse neural stem cell line (the same mouse stem cells used in the studies mentioned above). Using these results, we have selected a cohort of human stem cell candidates to which we will continue to study in upcoming experiments involving our AD model mice.

In addition to identifying the best human stem cells to conduct further studies, we have also performed experiments to determine the optimal immune suppression regimen to use in our human stem cell engraftment studies. Similar to organ transplants in humans, we will need to administer immune suppressants to mice which receive our candidate human stem cells. Our group has identified a potential suppressant, also found to work in humans, which we will use in future studies.