Therapeutic/Technology: Technology
Enhancing Survival of Embryonic Stem Cell-Derived Grafts by Induction of Immunological Tolerance
Although ESC-based therapies hold great promise for the cure of a wide diversity of degenerative diseases, rapid progress to actual human clinical trials is hindered by the lack of preclinical data for specific ESC-based therapies. I aim to move the process forward by establishing a protocol in which immune system cells are reproducibly produced from […]
A Novel Engineered Niche to Explore the Vasculogenic Potential of Embryonic Stem Cells
Cardiovascular diseases account for an estimated $330 billion in health care costs each year, afflict 61.8 million Americans, and will account for more than 1.5 million deaths in the U.S. this year alone. A number of these diseases are characterized by either insufficient blood vessel growth or damage to the existing vessels, resulting in inadequate […]
Trithorax and Polycomb methyltransferase complexes in cell fate determination.
The physiological template of our genome, called chromatin, is composed of DNA wrapped around histone proteins. In the process of development the genome is interpreted in a way that is dynamic, and yet, often heritable, to produce different specialized tissues and organs. A substantial portion of information that is required for proper interpretation of the […]
Genetic dissection of mesodermal commitment to the hematopoietic fates.
Genetic dissection of mesodermal commitment to hematopoietic fates. Hematopoietic cell transplantation is the gold standard for cell-based therapy and is routinely used to treat a wide variety of blood disorders and cancer. A major limitation exists, however, in finding donors whose immune systems are compatible with those of the patients requiring transplantation. The recent creation […]
Oral and Craniofacial Reconstruction Using Mesenchymal Stem Cells
The overall goal of this proposal is to explore a new stem cell-based treatment for major defects in the orofacial regions resulted from burns, physical injuries, genetic diseases, cancers, infectious diseases, and recently, bisphosphonate-associated osteonecrosis of the jaw (BONJ), using the patient’s own stem cells obtained from the oral cavity known as orofacial mesenchymal stem […]
Reprogramming of human somatic cells back to pluripotent embryonic stem cells
The ability to dedifferentiate or reverse lineage-committed cells to pluripotent/multipotent cells might overcome many of the obstacles (e.g. cell sources, immunocompatibility and bioethical concerns) associated with using other ES and adult stem cells in clinical applications. With an efficient dedifferentiation process, it is conceivable that healthy, abundant and easily accessible somatic cells could be reprogrammed […]
Reprogramming of human somatic cells back to pluripotent embryonic stem cells
The ability to dedifferentiate or reverse lineage-committed cells to pluripotent/multipotent cells might overcome many of the obstacles (e.g. cell sources, immunocompatibility and bioethical concerns) associated with using other ES and adult stem cells in clinical applications. With an efficient dedifferentiation process, it is conceivable that healthy, abundant and easily accessible somatic cells could be reprogrammed […]
Bioengineering technology for fast optical control of differentiation and function in stem cells and stem cell progeny
Embryonic stem (ES) cells potentially could provide clinically important replacement tissue for central nervous system (CNS) disease treatment, and regenerative medicine approaches involving ES cells have been suggested for common CNS disorders. But it has been difficult to produce the right kind of replacement tissues from ES cells because the “differentiation”, or cell-type specification process, […]
Noncoding RNAs in Cell Fate Determination
The human body is composed of thousands of cell types, which all came originally from embryonic stem cells. Although all these cell types have the same genetic blueprint, different genes are active in different cells in order to give each its distinctiveness. The process by which the genes remember whether they are in liver, brain, […]
Addressing the Cell Purity and Identity Bottleneck Through Generation and Expansion of Clonal Human Embryonic Progenitor Cell Lines
Human embryonic stem (hES) cells and induced pluripotent (iPS) cells, such as reprogrammed skin cells, offer the potential to revolutionize medicine because they can replicate indefinitely and become virtually any cell in the body. They therefore have the potential to provide a limitless source of cells to replace cells lost to injury (spinal cord, skin […]