Neurosurgery Department, UF College of Medicine
Steindler Neural Stem Cell Lab
Location: Room L3-132, McKnight Brain Institute
Director: Dennis A Steindler, PhD
E-mail: steindler@mbi.ufl.edu*
Research interests within the MBI-UF Programmatic Matrix:
Developmental Neurobiology, Neural Stem Cell Biology, Neuro-Biology of Aging/Dementia, Neuro-Cancer, Traumatic Brain Injury, Neural Genetics, Stem Cells, Cell and Molecular Biology, Neurological Disease
Description of Neuro-related Research:
The major research goal of my program is to see the use of stem cell therapy become a major treatment for debilitating neurological diseases. Five different but concurrently run set
s of experiments aim to advance our understanding and use of neural stem cell therapies. The five approaches are:
- The development and refinement of new in vitro methodologies that, in part, rely on insights from studies of hematopoiesis to selectively expand particular stem or progenitor cell populations and also control their differentiation into particular types of neurons;
- The discovery of genes and factors involved in stem cell growth and differentiation using clonal populations of stem/progenitor cells as a model for neurogenesis, by way of studying stem and progenitor cells from normal and neurological disease brains;
- Use of animal models of neurodegenerative disease by a dedicated transplant group in the lab that is refining methods of integrating grafted stem/progenitor cells into altered adult brain circuitries;
- Stem cell plasticity and homing in a variety of tissues; and
- Studying distinct stem/progenitor cell populations as a potential source of primary tumors.
In addition to augmenting the ex vivo expansion, and attempting to control fate and differentiation of stem/progenitor cells isolated from the postnatal and adult periventricular subependymal zone using culture methods developed in our lab that affect cell-cell and cell-substrate interactions, we also are using new molecular approaches to characterize novel developmental genes involved in cell genesis, survival and cell death.
The main strategy of these studies is to exploit well-known approaches for gaining access to molecular pathways that direct cell survival, proliferation, and fate determination. New experimental approaches use stem/progenitor cells as bioassays and vehicles for stem cell/gene therapy in human disease, including neurodegenerative diseases (e.g. Parkinson.s) and cancers (e.g testing the 'cancer stem cell' hypothesis).
Related links:
The Regeneration Project
View publications by Dr. Dennis Steindler
return to research main page or laboratories main page