The Cedars Institute will be housed in new state-of-the-art laboratories being constructed especially for stem cell and regenerative medicine research. At the heart of the Institute will be a specialized core facility for the production of Induced pluripotent stem cells.
Clive N. Svendsen, Jamie Thomson associate and joint leader of the widely-respected Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center at the University of Wisconsin, has been named to lead the new unit. He has quite a resume; one that includes professor of neurology and anatomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and consulting professor at Stanford University. Svendsen’s research focuses on both modeling and treating neurodegenerative disorders such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease) and Parkinson’s disease using a combination of stem cells and growth factors.
As director of the National Institutes of Health-funded Stem Cell Training Program at University of Wisconsin-Madison and editor of the Encyclopedia of Stem Cell Research, he has also had a longstanding interest in stem cell education, public policy and community outreach.
Under Svendsen’s direction, the Cedars-Sinai Regenerative Medicine Institute will bring together basic scientists with specialist clinicians, physician scientists and translational scientists across multiple medical specialties to translate fundamental stem cell studies to therapeutic regenerative medicine.
“Stem cell therapies offer new hope to patients with many life-threatening diseases," said Svendsen. "Such therapies require the integration of both basic and clinical scientists along with a careful balance of hype and hope in this very emotive field. We plan to recruit some of the best researchers to join with the current Cedars-Sinai physicians and scientists to ensure that Cedars-Sinai will be at the forefront of this endeavor.”
Adapted from the Cedars-Sinai announcement.
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