Lorenz Studer

Lorenz Studer (born March 6, 1966) is the Founder and Director of the Center for Stem Cell Biology at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. He is a developmental biologist and neuroscientist who is pioneering the generation of midbrain dopamine neurons for transplantation and clinical applications.^[1] Currently, he is a member of the Developmental Biology Program and Department of Neurosurgery at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and a Professor of Neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, NY.^[2]

In 2015, he was named a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship (also known as the "Genius Grant") for his innovative work on stem cell and Parkinson’s disease research.^[3]

Research

In 1998, while at the lab of Ronald D. McKay at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, he developed techniques that facilitate the generation of dopamine cells, the primary cell type affected in Parkinson's disease in vitro from dividing precursor cells. He successfully demonstrated that upon transplantation, these newly developed dopaminergic neurons can improve clinical symptoms in Parkinsonian rat models.^[4]

Over the years, he has developed a variety of novel cell engineering strategies for developing specific neural cell types in culture. Most notably, he has devised protocols for the transition (or "differentiation") of human pluripotent stem cells into neural and neural crest tissues and for the generation of functional dopaminergic neurons in large-scale quantities. In long-term studies, Studer demonstrated that these cells are non-tumorigenic, can integrate into the host brain and may serve as functional replacements for the substantia nigra dopamine neurons which die in Parkinson's disease.^[5]

As of 2015, he is continuing to work on initiating clinical trials for transplantation using lab grown dopaminergic neurons to treat Parkinson's disease.^[6] The researchers involved in the clinical trial efforts anticipate that by the end of 2017, it may be possible to submit an IND application to the United States FDA for a clinical trial in Parkinson's patients using ES cell-derived dopamine neurons.^[7]

Current research efforts also include directing the fate and age of human pluripotent stem cells, and using pluripotent stem cells as valuable tools for modeling human diseases such as Familial Dysautonomia, Hirschsprung's disease, neurodevelopmental disorders, as well as melanocyte-related diseases.

Other major contributions include the directed differentiation of nuclear transfer embryonic stem cells and parthenogenetic stem cells into specific neuron types. His lab was also the first to demonstrate "therapeutic cloning" in a mouse model of a central nervous system disorder.

Education and career

Studer, a native of Switzerland, graduated from medical school in 1991 and earned his neuroscience doctoral degree in 1994 at the University of Bern. There, he worked with Christian Spenger, culminating in the first clinical trial of fetal tissue transplantation for Parkinson’s disease in Switzerland in 1995. The following year, he joined Ronald McKay’s lab at the National Institute of Health (NIH) to investigate how neural cells could be isolated, cultured, and differentiated to produce neurons with the aim of restoring brain function in Parkinson’s disease mouse models.^[8]

In 2000, Studer moved to New York City where he embarked on his own research program at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) with a focus on exploring stem cells and brain repair. He also established the Sloan-Kettering Center for Stem Cell Biology and has been involved in a number of stem cell research committees and initiatives including the Tri-Institutional Stem Cell Initiative, (a collaboration between Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Rockefeller University, and Weill-Cornell Medical College), Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s disease research, and the New York Stem Cell Foundation.

In 2016, Studer became a scientific cofounder of BlueRock Therapeutics a biotech company to develop induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) therapies. ^[9]

Awards and memberships

• Louise and Allston Boyer Young Investigator in Basic Research, MSKCC (2005)
• Annemarie Opprecht Award for Parkinson's Disease Research (2012)^[10]
• Member, American Society for Clinical Investigation (2014)
• MacArthur Fellows Program (2015)^[11]

Selected publications

• Tabar, Viviane, and Lorenz Studer. "Pluripotent stem cells in regenerative medicine: challenges and recent progress." Nature Reviews Genetics 15.2 (2014): 82-92.
• Kriks, Sonja, Jae-Won Shim, Jinghua Piao, Yosif M. Ganat, Dustin R. Wakeman, Zhong Xie, Luis Carrillo-Reid et al. "Dopamine neurons derived from human ES cells efficiently engraft in animal models of Parkinson/'s disease." Nature 480, no. 7378 (2011): 547-551.
• Chambers, Stuart M., Christopher A. Fasano, Eirini P. Papapetrou, Mark Tomishima, Michel Sadelain, and Lorenz Studer. "Highly efficient neural conversion of human ES and iPS cells by dual inhibition of SMAD signaling." Nature Biotechnology 27, no. 3 (2009): 275-280.
• Tabar, Viviane, Mark Tomishima, Georgia Panagiotakos, Sayaka Wakayama, Jayanthi Menon, Bill Chan, Eiji Mizutani et al. "Therapeutic cloning in individual parkinsonian mice." Nature Medicine 14, no. 4 (2008): 379-381.
• Lee, Gabsang, Hyesoo Kim, Yechiel Elkabetz, George Al Shamy, Georgia Panagiotakos, Tiziano Barberi, Viviane Tabar, and Lorenz Studer. "Isolation and directed differentiation of neural crest stem cells derived from human embryonic stem cells." Nature Biotechnology 25, no. 12 (2007).
• Wakayama, Teruhiko, Viviane Tabar, Ivan Rodriguez, Anthony CF Perry, Lorenz Studer, and Peter Mombaerts. "Differentiation of embryonic stem cell lines generated from adult somatic cells by nuclear transfer." Science 292, no. 5517 (2001): 740-743.
• Studer, L., V. Tabar, and R.D. McKay (1998) Transplantation of expanded mesencephalic precursors leads to recovery in Parkinsonian rats. Nature Neuroscience 1:290-295.

References