“Applications of iPSCs for CNS discovery and translation.”

Title:

“Applications of iPSCs for CNS discovery and translation.”

Bio:

Dr. Thomas M. Durcan is an Associate Professor within the Montreal Neurological Institute (The Neuro) and McGill University. He is also Director of the Neuro’s Early Drug Discovery Unit (EDDU), focused on the use of human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) for fundamental and translational discovery project through partnerships with academia and industry. Founded over a decade ago, the group has established a cohort of 250+ iPSCs that have been advanced into different projects within the group and used to generate a wide range of neuronal and glial subtypes, in addition to more advanced 3D brain organoid models. With the lines, methods and workflows in place, they work with researchers and companies as "The First Step" in helping take a target and move it towards a therapy for diseases of the brain, from Parkinson's disease, to ALS, neurodevelopmental disorders to more recent work on rare inherited CNS disorders.