RESEARCH OVERVIEW

The advancement in the neural stem cell biology field let us be able to better understand nervous system development, mechanisms of injury and approaches to regeneration. Thorough understanding of the molecular mechanism controlling the survival and differentiation of the neural stem cell survival and the more restricted precursor cells derived from stem cells will increase our ability to use these cells to successfully repair damaged tissue by transplantation. More and more evidence suggest that neural precursor cells might be a major target in a number of neural degenerative diseases and neural impairment caused by environmental toxicants and medications. Identification of the molecular mechanisms involved in these conditions will be enable us to find novel approaches for clinical interventions. For example, if we could find the signal pathways that are dysregulated in these diseases and toxicant-induced neurotoxicity, it may be possible to treat such defects by correcting the dysregulated signaling.

Together with our colleagues Mark Noble, Chris Pröschel, and Margot Mayer-Pröschel, our teams are interested in signaling pathways regulating neural precursor cell survival and differentiation and their dysregulation in many neural degenerative diseases. We are also interested in investigating how environmental toxicants, chemotherapeutic drugs and other substances (such as alcohol and amyloid beta protein) cause the perturbations in these signaling pathways and how to prevent their toxicity to neural precursor cells. Recently, we discovered a signal pathway, which regulates the glial precursor cell survival and differentiation is activated by several environment toxicants that caused impairment of glial precursor cell function. Our immediate goals are to understand the molecular mechanisms that are involved in the dysregulation of precursor cell function caused by environmental toxicants, medications, and several other substances with the long-term goal of developing intervention strategies that are suitable for the initiation of clinical intervention.

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