Human Stem Cell Use: iPS Cell
Developing induced pluripotent stem cells into human therapeutics and disease models
Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) can undergo unlimited self-renewal and differentiate into all the cell types in the human body, and thus hold great promise for cell replacement therapy. However, one major problem for hESC-based therapy is that the cells derived from hESCs will be rejected by the recipient and can only be tolerated under […]
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 […]
Induction of immune tolerance after spinal grafting of human ES-derived neural precursors
Previous clinical studies have shown that grafting of human fetal brain tissue into the CNS of adult recipients can be associated with long-term (more then 10 years) graft survival even after immunosuppression is terminated. These clinical data represent in part the scientific base for the CNS to be designated as an immune privilege site, i.e., […]
Engineering Embryonic Stem Cell Allografts for Operational Tolerance
Stem cells, like all transplants not derived from an identical twin, are subject to scrutiny by the immune system and, without medical interventions that suppress the immune system, are usually killed after transplantation. However, rare exceptions to this rule exist because a small fraction of transplant patients has been able to maintain their transplant in […]
Donor natural killer (NK) cells as “veto” cells to promote donor-specific tolerance
A major issue in the use of stem cells or in organ transplantation in general is the need to overcome graft rejection. Unfortunately, the only means currently available involves the use of systemic immunosuppression which leaves the recipient at risk for opportunistic infections. This proposal will seek to use the donor’s immune cells to prevent […]
Thymus based tolerance to stem cell therapies
This proposal focuses on the role of the immune system in transplantation of derivatives of human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs). A critical roadblock to successful cell replacement therapies, no matter what the disease or injury, is the fact that the immune system’s main function is to prevent the introduction of foreign substances into our bodies. […]
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 […]
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 […]
The Stem Cell Matrix: a map of the molecular pathways that define pluripotent cells
Human embryonic stem cells (hESC) are being considered for a wide range of research and therapeutic uses. Cell therapy is the most challenging of the potential clinical applications and its success will depend on the ability to guide differentiation of hESC into clinically useful cell types. The ideal cell types would possess three features: the […]
The University of California San Francisco Shared Research and Teaching Laboratory: a Non-Federal Human Embryonic Stem Cell Resource for the Bay Area Community
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has a long history of making innovative discoveries that change the way scientists and clinicians think about disease processes and their approaches to finding cures. Accordingly, researchers at this institution were quick to appreciate the enormous promise of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) as research tools for understanding […]