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Using Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell technology to model Parkinson’s disease

Ángel Raya

Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) & Center for Regenerative Medicine in Barcelona (CMRB)

18 Dec 2014 13:00

Achucarro Seminar Room, Building #205, Zamudio

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The reprogramming of somatic cells to Induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells using delivery of defined combinations of transcription factors is a groundbreaking discovery that opens great opportunities for modeling human diseases, including Parkinson’s disease (PD). iPS cells can be generated from patients and differentiated into disease-relevant cell types, which would capture the patients’ genetic complexity. Furthermore, human iPS-derived neuronal models offer unprecedented access to early stages of the disease, allowing the investigation of the events that initiate the pathologic process in PD. Recently, human iPS-derived neurons from patients with familial and sporadic PD have been generated and importantly they recapitulate some PD-related cell phenotypes, including abnormal α-synuclein accumulation in vitro, and alterations in the autophagy machinery. I will introduce our efforts to generate PD iPS-based models and discus the potential future research directions of this field.

 

 

Ángel Raya Chamorro, MD, PhD is an ICREA Research Professor at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and the Director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine in Barcelona (CMRB).

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