Cologne Seminars on Ageing "Directing differentiation, maturation and age in human PSC-derived neurons"

About Dr. Studer's talk:

Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) are a powerful tool for studying human disease and developing cell-based therapies. Our group has developed strategies to coax hPSCs into many specific neuron types on demand and at scale. For some lineages, such as midbrain dopamine neurons, those efforts have translated into a first-in-human clinical trial using clinical-grade, "off-the-shelf" dopamine neurons for advanced Parkinson's disease. However, key challenges remain for generating lineages relevant to adult or late-onset nervous system disorders. Chief among them is controlling maturation and age, driving hPSC-derived neurons from a predominantly fetal identity toward an adult or aged-like state. We recently described chemical and genetic strategies that converged on an epigenetic barrier of maturation, present in immature neurons and their neural precursors and linked to the protracted timing of human neuron maturation. I will present data from a recent genome-wide CRISPR screen identifying additional regulators of human developmental timing across multiple lineages.
Finally, we have used CRISPR-based and in silico screens to identify drivers of neuronal age and senescence that enable induction of lateonset phenotypes in models of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. Together, these strategies bring us closer to directing cell fate, maturation, and age on demand in human PSC-derived cells.

This event is aimed at a specialist audience.