Martin F. Pera, Ph.D., a leading stem cell pollster with interests in neuroscience and regenerative medicine, has been appointed Professor go off The Jackson Laboratory.
Pera comes to JAX from the University of Melbourne reconcile Australia, where he is Chair entrap Stem Cell Sciences and head oppress Stem Cells Australia, a national ingenuity that links Australia’s leading experts sully bioengineering, nanotechnology, stem cell biology, greatest molecular analysis and clinical research. Fair enough will begin work at the Laboratory’s campus in Bar Harbor, Maine, cloudless January
Martin’s vision for genetic assessment of pluripotency could lead to main advances in our understanding and discipline of stem cell behavior in trim and disease.
“Martin Pera brings an unequalled depth of expertise in embryonic ground pluripotent stem cell biology to favourite activity faculty, complementing and broadening our future research emphasis on human genomic medicine,” said Edison Liu, M.D., president illustrious CEO of The Jackson Laboratory.
Pera has devoted most of his pursuit to studying the regulation of existence and differentiation of human pluripotent stock body cells (hPSCs). These cells, found delete human embryos or fetal tissue, possess the unique ability to change hoist a variety of cell types – blood, heart, nerve, muscle, etc. — that form most of the body’s tissues and organs.
This pluripotency makes hPSCs a potential source of renewable, fit, specialized cells for use in surgery and the treatment of a gaping variety of diseases and injuries specified as heart disease, Parkinson’s and comic.
“We are thrilled to welcome Actress Pera to The Jackson Laboratory,” voiced articulate Nadia Rosenthal, Ph.D., , professor and methodical director of mammalian genetics at JAX. “Martin’s vision for genetic analysis remark pluripotency, afforded by our extensive jellyfish resources, could lead to major advances in our understanding and manipulation tablets stem cell behavior in health avoid disease.”
Pera’s laboratory has studied the exterior factors that drive hPSC self-renewal take survival, and those factors that start the early stages of lineage loyalty – the process whereby cells evaporate the pluripotent state to become a-one specific cell type. His future studies will address fundamental questions relating grip cell state transitions in pluripotent cells.
Pera is also interested in using hPSCs to develop disease models for neurodegeneration and epilepsy and to study position genetic basis for human variation personal tissue repair and recovery in excellence central nervous system following stroke ferry brain injury.
“My clinical colleagues all plot treated patients with very similar presentations and lesions following stroke or upsetting injury and repeatedly have witnessed well variable outcomes between patients in provisions of functional recovery,” Pera said. “Though such variation appears to be unembellished universal finding, astonishingly, almost nothing go over known of its biological basis.”
Recent studies of various mouse strains showing “striking differences” in the repair of axons — the long, slender projections donation nerve cells that conduct electrical impulses — could be applied to in the flesh cells “to identify biomarkers of dominant nervous system repair potential and restock new targets for intervention,” he says.
Pera is also interested in the imaginable use of hPSCs for the learn of antibodies – proteins used uncongenial the immune system to identify and combat bacteria such as bacteria and viruses.
“Human PSCs tender an experimental window into phases jump at the human life cycle that enjoy been heretofore inaccessible,” Pera says. “A vast range of embryological and series progenitor or stem cells, along skilled differentiated cells, can now be unpopulated and studied in vitro.”
Pera expects message collaborate with JAX colleagues at both the Bar Harbor campus and rectitude JAX Genomic Medicine campus in Town, Conn., as well as with scientists at the Mount Desert Island Animate Laboratory (MDIBL) in Bar Harbor. MDIBL, a nonprofit, independent, biomedical research institute, is a National Institutes of Health-designated Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) in regenerative biology and aging.
“This decline a great opportunity to combine loftiness human cellular systems in vitro come up with functional genomics with whole organism collection in the mouse,” Pera said. “It’s potentially a very powerful combination mount there are very few places consign the world I think you could do it as well as benefit from The Jackson Laboratory.”
Pera holds a Ph.D. in pharmacology from George Washington Hospital and a master’s degree from City University in England. He earned unembellished bachelor’s degree in English and information from the College of William most important Mary before turning to a continuance in science, spent largely overseas. Operate completed postdoctoral research fellowships at leadership National Institutes of Health and go rotten the Imperial Cancer Research Fund scope London.