Piyush Joshi Mentor : Ste ven S tice
Oral Presen ta ti on Class o f 2015
A Chicken Embryo Culture System for Injections and Imaging Authors: Piyush Joshi
The goal of this project is to establish an efficient method of Stage X chicken embryo injections to investigate the dynamics of the early CNS development. Human neural progenitor stem cells (hNPs) will be injected into the developing chicken embryo at Stage X and tracked with fluorescence microscopy. After injection, we expect the cells will migrate and integrate into the central nervous system (CNS) of the chicken. A reliable method of Stage X chicken injection and imaging will allow the observation of human neural cells participating in primary neurulation. When successful, this will provide a means of studying early stages of CNS development as an aspect of a larger project to investigate development neural toxicology with the chick as a model system.
Mary Kate Mehegan Mentor : Fran klin Wes t
Oral Presen ta ti on Class o f 2016
Development and Characterization of a Novel Landrace Piglet Cortical Impact Traumatic Brain Injury Model Authors: Mary Kate Mehegan, Emily Wyatt, Holly Kinder, Jessica McCabe, and Franklin West
In the year 2010, 2.5 million people suffered from a traumatic brain injury (TBI). In the United States alone, approximately 50,000 deaths result from TBIs annually. At this time, there is no adequate TBI treatment available. Recently, the West Laboratory developed induced pluripotent stem cell-derived neural stem cells (iPSC-NSCs). These iPSC-NSCs may potentially serve as a regenerative cell replacement therapy as they are capable of differentiating into neurons, astrocytes and oligodendrocytes while also producing regenerative factors such as VEGF. Although these cells have been shown to lead to significant structural and functional improvement in rodent models, treatments that have been developed in rodent models have regularly failed in clinical trials. Thus, more predictive large animal models are needed. The pig serves as an excellent large animal model with a large gyrencephalic brain that has gray-white matter composition similar to humans, unlike rodent models. We have developed a model with four treatment groups; 2 m/s and 4 m/s at 6 mm impact velocity, as well as 4 m/s at 12 mm and 15 mm depth. This study serves as a model for future iPSC-NSC therapy studies. We hypothesize piglets receiving a cortical impact will develop brain lesions, show changes in inflammatory response, macrophage infiltration, glial scaring and changes in motor function deficits ranging from mild to severe based on impact speed. Development of this model will allow for the testing of efficacy and safety of novel stem cell therapies as well as traditional pharmacological and device approaches. 7|P a g e