Teachers

Professor Zhang's research addresses how functionally diversified neuronal and glial subtypes are born in the making of our human brain with the long-term goal of repairing injured or disease brain. He has developed models of neural differentiation from mouse, monkey, and human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) that recapitulate key early developmental events, including induction of multipotential neuroepithelial cells that form neural tube-like structures, patterning of region-specific neural progenitors, and generation of neurons and glia with particular transmitter or functional phenotypes. In parallel, he is building transgenic human ESC lines with regulatable gene expression and dissecting biochemical interactions underlying the cellular differentiation processes under defined conditions. By introducing disease-provoking genes into ESCs or by activating the pluoripotent state of genetically mutated adult cells, Dr. Zhang is creating model systems for analysis of pathological cellular and molecular processes in bona fide human neurons and glia in a simplified environment. Such systems may be transformed to templates for pharmaceutical screening. In addition, the specialized neural cells produced from normal human ESCs in the Zhang lab are being tested for their therapeutic potential in animal models of neurological diseases such as Parkinson's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, spinal cord injury, and multiple sclerosis.
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