Project Objective: Research Insights
High throughput modeling of human neurodegenerative diseases in embryonic stem cells
An important class of neurological diseases predominantly affects spinal motor neurons, the neurons that control muscle movement. The most well known of these motor neuronopathies is Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease for the famous Yankee first baseman who died of the disease. The first symptoms of ALS are usually […]
Induction of cardiogenesis in pluripotent cells via chromatin remodeling factors
Heart disease is one of the biggest killers in the civilized world, and as populations age, this trend will increase dramatically. Currently the only way to treat failing hearts is with expensive and relatively ineffective drugs, or by heart transplantation. Ideally, we would like to be able to regenerate sick or dead heart tissue. The […]
Derivation and comparative analysis of human pluripotent ESCs, iPSCs and SSCs: Convergence to an embryonic phenotype
This is an unprecedented time in stem cell biology and regenerative medicine. Today, we have cell lines and tools that did not exist just a few years ago. Indeed, human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) were derived from pre-implantation embryos just 10 years ago; more recently in the past year, cells with extensive similarities to ESCs […]
New Technology for the Derivation of Human Pluripotent Stem Cell Lines for Clinical Use
Since their discovery almost ten years ago, there has been steady progress towards the application of human embryonic stem (ES) cells in medicine. Now, the field is on the threshold of a new era. Recent results from several laboratories show that human skin cells can be converted to cells resembling ES cells through simple genetic […]
Derivation and analysis of pluripotent stem cell lines with inherited TGF-b mediated disorders from donated IVF embryos and reprogrammed adult skin fibroblasts
The field of regenerative medicine revolves around the capacity of a subset of cells, called stem cells, to become the mature tissues of the adult human body. By studying stem cells, we hope to develop methods and reagents for treating disease. For instance, we hope to develop methods for making stem cells become cardiovascular cells […]
Somatic cell age and memory in the generation of iPS cells
Pluripotent stem cells can give rise to any cell type of the body and hold enormous promise for regenerative medicine. Pluripotent stem cells, such as embryonic stem (ES) cells, are derived from very young human embryos. It is of great interest to derive pluripotent stem cells from adult cells. In this way, one could potentially […]
Establishment of Frontotemporal Dementia Patient-Specific Induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) Cell Lines with Defined Genetic Mutations
We propose to generate induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells from skin cells derived from human subjects with frontotemporal dementia (FTD). FTD accounts for 15–20% of all dementia cases and, with newly identified genetic causes, is now recognized as the most common dementia in patients under 65 years of age. FTD patients suffer progressive neurodegeneration in […]
New Cell Lines for Huntington’s Disease
Huntington’s disease (HD) is a devastating neurodegenerative disease with a 1/10,000 disease risk that always leads to death. These numbers do not fully reflect the large societal and familial cost of HD, which requires extensive caregiving and has a 50% chance of passing the mutation to the next generation. Current treatments treat some symptoms but […]
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 […]