Grant: Foundation Grant

Our lab studies where brains come from: the cell lineages in development that make the brain, the retina, the pancreas and the neurons of the gut. We discovered a novel primitive neural stem cells that is the first brain cell in the developing embryo. Most significant, we found that this cell persists as a quiescent stem cell in our adult brains and may be a great target for neural regeneration (replacing brain cells lost to disease or injury). We discovered retinal stem cells and suggest that their ability to make pure populations of photoreceptors in the lab may permit transplantation and reversal of blindness in humans in the near term. We discovered pancreatic stem cells (which may be useful in treating diabetes, and also produce some unusual neurons important in gut contraction). We plan to characterize the lineages from these stem cells to their differentiated progeny, revealing the basic biology of lineage determination and identifying superb cells for potential stem cell therapy in humans.