Stem Cell Symposium

First Annual Wisconsin Stem Cell Symposium
Neural Stem Cells
Presenter Biographies  

Dr. Nicholas Boulis is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Neurology at the University of Michigan Medical School and a Neurosurgeon at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Neurological Restoration.  He is a physician scientist whose research interests include biological neurorestoration and neuromodulation through the use of cell, protein, and gene delivery to the nervous system. Dr. Boulis graduated summa cum laude from Yale University with distinction in the intensive Biology and Philosophy majors. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Medical School winning the Harold Lamport Biomedical Research Award.

Dr. Boulis has developed a clinical program focusing on peripheral nerve regeneration, spasticity, pain, and Parkinson's Disease. He applies advanced microsurgical, radiosurgical, as well as ablative and neural augmentation approaches. He is currently working on strategies for gene based motor neuron protection for ALS, neural targeting of gene delivery, and gene-based neuromodulation. He collaborates with Nicholas Mazarakis PhD. of Oxford Biomedica as well as Michael Imperiale PhD. and Eva Feldman MD PhD at the University of Michigan in the field of ALS gene therapy. His work on neural targeting of biological therapies involves an active collaboration with Tom Brown PhD. of Massachussetts General Hospital. Finally, his lab collaborates with Imad Najm MD (CCF) on epilepsy neuromodulation, T Subramanian MD (CCF) on Parkinson's neuromodulation, and Michael Davis PhD. (Emory) on anxiety neuromodulation .

In the last year, Dr. Boulis has presented his work at the American Society for Gene Therapy, Society for Neuroscience, The Congress of Neurological Surgeons, and The American Association of Neurologic Surgeon s. Author of 46 publications. For the past seven years, Dr. Boulis has independently organized and secured funding for an outreach/teaching mission to provide surgical therapy to patients in Guatemala requiring treatment for hydrocephalus and spina bifida. To date, "Project Shunt" has provided 186 free operations to impoverished Guatemalan children. Dr. Boulis is an integral member of the Center's innovative neurosurgical team, equally skilled in clinical and laboratory settings.

Alan Colman has been Chief Executive Officer of ES Cell International (ESI) since Feb 2005, having been its Chief Scientific Officer since April 2002.  ESI is a small Singapore based company whose mission is to develop embryonic stem cell based therapies for the treatment of diabetes and congestive heart failure.  He obtained a BA degree in Biochemistry in Oxford (1971) and a PhD under John Gurdon, a pioneer of the field of nuclear transfer, at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK (1974). After a series of academic appointments in Oxford and Warwick Universities, Dr. Colman became Professor of Biochemistry in the University of Birmingham, UK. The focus of his academic career was the area of eucaryotic protein secretion, with a particular emphasis on the use of frog oocytes and eggs as in vivo test tubes. 

From 1987 until March 2002, he was research director of the company PPL Therapeutics in Edinburgh, UK.  This company specialized in the production of transgenic livestock that produced human therapeutic proteins in their milk   PPL attracted considerable media attention because of their participation, together with the Roslin Institute, in the technique of somatic nuclear transfer.  This work led to Dolly, the world’s first sheep cloned from an adult somatic cell (1996), Polly and Molly, the first cloned transgenic livestock (1997),  Diana and Cupid, the first livestock with targeted genetic changes (2000), Millie et al., the first cloned pigs (2000) and, finally, Austin and crew, the first homozygous, alpha gal transferase knock out pigs (2003)

Dr. Colman lists amongst his hobbies, mountain biking, scuba diving,  white water rafting, skiing and trying to approach old age gracefully.

Fred H. Gage, Adler Professor in the Laboratory of Genetics, joined The Salk Institute in 1995; he is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of California -
San Diego.  He received his Ph.D. in 1976 from The Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Gage's work concentrates on the adult central nervous system and unexpected plasticity and adaptability to environmental stimulation that remains throughout the life of all mammals. In addition, his studies focus on the cellular, molecular, as well as environmental influences that regulate neurogenesis in the adult brain and spinal cord.

Prior to joining Salk, Dr. Gage was a Professor of Neuroscience at the University of California - San Diego. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine, and a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Gage also served as president of the Society for Neuroscience in 2002.

In addition, Dr. Gage has been the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, among them the 1993 Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievements in Health and Education, the Christopher Reeve Research Medal in 1997, the 1999 Max Planck Research Prize, and the MetLife Award in 2002.

Steven A. Goldman
Chief, Division of Cell and Gene Therapy
Glenn-Zutes Chair in Biology of the Aging Brain
Professor of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Pediatrics
University of Rochester Medical Center

William A. Linton is the founder, President and Chairman of Promega Corporation. Mr. Linton has served as director or advisor for numerous industry, government, and community organizations. He currently serves as director for Bruker Biosciences, High Throughput Genomics, the Wisconsin Technology Council, and is Chairman of the Analytical and Life Science Systems Association.  He also serves on the Dean’s Advisory Board for the Department of International Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Through his vision, Promega established the BioPharmaceutical Technology Center Institute (BTCI) in 1993 and Woods Hollow Children’s Center in 1991. The BTCI is a not-for-profit educational institute offering programming in the sciences, arts and culture to local and global communities. Woods Hollow is a corporate-sponsored childcare facility, providing infant through school-age care for families employed at nearby businesses and at Promega Corporation, as well as families living in the surrounding area.

Sean J. Morrison
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Associate Professor, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan
Director, University of Michigan Center for Stem Cell Biology

The Morrison laboratory studies the cellular and molecular mechanisms that regulate stem cell function in the nervous and hematopoietic systems.  Dr. Morrison obtained his B.Sc. in biology and chemistry from Dalhousie University (1991), then completed a Ph.D. in Immunology at Stanford University (1996), and a postdoctoral fellowship at Caltech (1999). Since 1999, Dr. Morrison has been at the University of Michigan (http://www.umich.edu/~stemcell/), where his laboratory studies the mechanisms that regulate stem cell functions like self-renewal, aging, and organogenesis. Dr. Morrison was a Searle Scholar (2000-2003), was named to Technology Review Magazine’s list of 100 young innovators (2002), received the Wired Magazine Rave Award for Science (2003), and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the White House (2003).  The Morrison laboratory’s work on stem cells is funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Defense.  In addition to stem cell research, Dr. Morrison has been active in public policy issues surrounding stem cells as a Director of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, and as a member of the American Society for Cell Biology Public Policy Committee.

Clive Svendsen, Ph.D. is professor of Anatomy and Neurology and has laboratories at the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Dr. Svendsen received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and has conducted neuroscience research for the past 20 years. He has been interested in human neural stem cells for over 10 years and published widely in this area.  In particular Dr. Svendsen has focused on generating banks of human stem cells with potential use in clinical trials for diseases such as Parkinson’s and ALS.   A unique aspect of his work is combining stem cells with gene therapy and powerful growth factors that are able to regenerate damaged brain tissues.

Dr. Svendsen and his colleagues at the Waisman Center's Stem Cell Research Program focus on understanding the molecular mechanisms responsible for stem cell proliferation and differentiation and assessing their safety and efficacy following transplantation.  The program is committed to using alternative cellular sources through the generation of neural stem cells. The researchers there have extensive experience in the growth and differentiation of human neural stem cells—these are remarkably plastic and able to integrate into the developing, adult and injured brain. They also provide a unique "window" into human neural development, normally impossible to study in detail.

Svendsen has published over 100 articles in a variety of scientific journals, including Lancet, Nature Biotechnology, and Science.  He sits on the advisory board for a number of foundations including the Michael J. Fox research foundation.   He has a long standing interest in the use of both embryonic stem cells and other types of stem cells to restore function in neurological diseases and a wide experience in discussing these issues with politicians, patient groups and scientists.

Representative publications:

Svendsen, C.N.  (2000).  Stem Cells.  In: A Companion to Genethics.  Edited by Justine Burley.  Blackwell Publishing, pp  7-18.

Jakel RJ, Schneider BL, Svendsen CN. (2004). Modeling neurodegenerative diseases using human neural stem cells.  Nature Reviews/Genetics; 5; 1-8.

Svendsen, C.N. and Langston, J.  (2004)   Stem cells for Parkinson’s Disease and ALS:  Replacement or protection?  Nature Medicine, 10; 224-225.

Derek van der Kooy received a Master¹s Degree in Psychology at the
University of British Columbia, and Ph.D in Anatomy, both at Erasmus
University in 1978, as well in the Department of Anatomy at the University
of Toronto in 1980. Dr. van der Kooy gained postdoctoral research
experience at Cambridge University and at the Salk Institute in California.
In 1981, he became an Assistant Professor, was promoted to Associate
Professor in 1986, and has served as Professor in the Department of Anatomy
and Cell Biology at the U of T from 1991 until 2002, when he became a
Professor in the Department of Medical Genetics and Microbiology.

Professor van der Kooy's lab carries out various neuroscience and
developmental biology research projects. In 1994 his paper on neural stem
cells in the adult mammalian forebrain was published in the journal Neuron.
This work first established that adult mammalian neural stem cells were
located in the subependyma of the forebrain lateral ventricle, where two
types of lineage related precursor cells, progenitor cells and stem cells,
were shown to be present. Proliferation of these cell types were
characterized in further experiments that were reported in articles in
Development and the Journal of Neuroscience. Of note, Derek's lab produced
the first report of stem cells in the adult mammalian eye, published in 2000
in Science. Further work, which was published in the journal, Neuron, 2001,
documented how ES cells were shown to
differentiate directly to neural stem cells through a default mechanism.
Derek's lab continues to investigate the nature of stem cells, embryonic and
adult, the concept of immortal cells, and the differentiation of embryonic
stem cells, which are capable of forming any tissue in the body, to neural
stem cells.

Su-Chun Zhang
M.D., Wenzhou Medical College
PhD, University of Saskatchewan
Assistant Professor of Anatomy and Neurology, UW-Madison

Dr. Su-Chun Zhang is an assistant professor of Anatomy and Neurology at the University of Wisconsin Madison.  His research at the Waisman Mental Retardation Center focuses the interactions between extracelluar signals and the cell intrinsic program that control the birth of functional neuronal and glial subtypes during development as well as the process leading to neural degeneration.  His research group has established chemically defined culture systems to efficiently direct embryonic stem cells to multipotential neuroepithelial cells (neural stem cells) and more specialized neural types such as midbrain dopamine neurons and spinal motor neurons.  The stem cell differentiation model systems recapitulate key events during early human brain development and thus form the foundation for dissecting the molecular mechanism underlying early human neural development.  His group is also investigating human embryonic stem cells that possess natural mutations or are genetically modified to express “disease genes” to explore the molecular undertaking that leads to neural cell degeneration.  These in vitro produced human neurons and glial cells provide a source for potential cell therapy as well as a target for screening therapeutics for neural degenerative diseases.