Stem cell medicine promises to revolutionize the treatment of human diseases and injuries, and has captured the hopes of the scientific community and the public alike. Perhaps nowhere is the potential of stem cells to treat human disease and injury more promising than for neurologic disorders. Traveling a path from ?bench to bedside? is still a relatively new opportunity for researchers and provides novel challenges for training graduate students. Historically, pre-doctoral neuroscience students were trained in understanding the basic biological mechanisms underlying how the brain functions and guides behavior, learning and memory, movement, and to identify the processes that become dysregulated and result in neurological disease. Indeed, the biological mechanisms and causes for many neurological diseases have been identified, paving the way for the generation of transgenic animals and model systems to study neurological disorders. Critically, these advances, combined with the advent of stem cell biology, open a path to treat neurologic diseases with transplantation of stem cell derived cell populations or to develop treatment strategies in stem-cell derived cell models. This is a path that requires training beyond basic science. Accordingly, the goal of our Training Program in Stem Cell Translational Medicine for Neurological Disorders is to provide opportunities for pre-doctoral trainees to perform translational bench research that could treat human neurological disease and injury, in the spirit of the NIH vision for translational medicine. Additionally however, to meet the challenges presented by the advent of this new frontier, we provide opportunities for trainees in the clinical aspects of the disease they are studying. These opportunities enable identification of therapeutic targets with the greatest relevance to human disease, inform preclinical safety and efficacy testing, and define preclinical outcome measures that parallel clinical metrics. Furthermore, this program familiarizes trainees with the complexities of the regulatory processes required for human clinical trials and the business of taking research products to patients. A novel, and highly successful, aspect of the training is coaching in communication, conflict resolution, interpersonal and group interactions skills. These skills are important both for success in working in interdisciplinary teams and for helping in the success and retention of underrepresented minority students. Taken together, these opportunities will prepare students for careers inside and outside academia and will advance the NIH goals of enhancing biomedical research in the context of health and human services as a whole. The program we have implemented thus fills a significant training gap in the translational application of stem cell biology to neurological disorders, not typically met by traditional neurobiology, stem cell or clinical graduate programs.

Public Health Relevance

Stem cell based treatments offer unprecedented hope to treat human neurological disorders. Training of new scientists having expertise in stem cell biology and neuroscience, together with industry, regulatory and clinical knowledge, is essential to this goal. We have implemented these goals within our NIH Training Program in Stem Cell Translational Medicine for Neurological Disorders to train predoctoral students in integrated and translational approaches to stem cell biology, neuroscience and human neurological disease and propose to renew this successful training program.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)
Type
Institutional National Research Service Award (T32)
Project #
5T32NS082174-08
Application #
9960591
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZNS1)
Program Officer
Korn, Stephen J
Project Start
2013-07-01
Project End
2023-06-30
Budget Start
2020-07-01
Budget End
2021-06-30
Support Year
8
Fiscal Year
2020
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of California Irvine
Department
Psychiatry
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
046705849
City
Irvine
State
CA
Country
United States
Zip Code
92617
Que, Richard A; Arulmoli, Janahan; Da Silva, Nancy A et al. (2018) Recombinant collagen scaffolds as substrates for human neural stem/progenitor cells. J Biomed Mater Res A 106:1363-1372
Morozko, Eva L; Ochaba, Joseph; Hernandez, Sarah J et al. (2018) Longitudinal Biochemical Assay Analysis of Mutant Huntingtin Exon 1 Protein in R6/2 Mice. J Huntingtons Dis 7:321-335
Yale, Andrew R; Nourse, Jamison L; Lee, Kayla R et al. (2018) Cell Surface N-Glycans Influence Electrophysiological Properties and Fate Potential of Neural Stem Cells. Stem Cell Reports 11:869-882
Smith, Sarah M; Limoli, Charles L (2017) Stem Cell Therapies for the Resolution of Radiation Injury to the Brain. Curr Stem Cell Rep 3:342-347
Lomeli, Naomi; Di, Kaijun; Czerniawski, Jennifer et al. (2017) Cisplatin-induced mitochondrial dysfunction is associated with impaired cognitive function in rats. Free Radic Biol Med 102:274-286
John, Tami; Lomeli, Naomi; Bota, Daniela A (2017) Systemic cisplatin exposure during infancy and adolescence causes impaired cognitive function in adulthood. Behav Brain Res 319:200-206
Marsh, Samuel E; Yeung, Stephen T; Torres, Maria et al. (2017) HuCNS-SC Human NSCs Fail to Differentiate, Form Ectopic Clusters, and Provide No Cognitive Benefits in a Transgenic Model of Alzheimer's Disease. Stem Cell Reports 8:235-248
Thompson, J M; Nguyen, Q H; Singh, M et al. (2017) Rho-associated kinase 1 inhibition is synthetically lethal with von Hippel-Lindau deficiency in clear cell renal cell carcinoma. Oncogene 36:1080-1089
Riazifar, Milad; Pone, Egest J; Lötvall, Jan et al. (2017) Stem Cell Extracellular Vesicles: Extended Messages of Regeneration. Annu Rev Pharmacol Toxicol 57:125-154
Mangale, Vrushali; Marro, Brett S; Plaisted, Warren C et al. (2017) Neural precursor cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells exhibit reduced susceptibility to infection with a neurotropic coronavirus. Virology 511:49-55

Showing the most recent 10 out of 25 publications