Email to a colleague
View Printer Friendly           Home | Other Research | 2008 Summer Fellowship Opportunity

Current Medical Student Summer Research Fellows

·	Current Medical Student Research Fellows

Anne Chin Institution: UMDNJ – New Jersey Medical School The aims of the project are: (1) to determine whether NSCs engineered to secrete GDNF will survive, differentiate and migrate better than nonengineered NSCs following transplantation into the injured spinal cord in rats; (2) to determine one mechanism underlying the advantage of GDNF-expressing stem cell transplants. Spinal cord injury contusion rat models will be treated with NSCs and subsequently monitored in behavioral testing and rated using the Bresnahan-Beattie-Basso scoring scale. In addition to behavioral testing, specimens will undergo electrophysiological testing and histological analysis to investigate the extent and mechanism of stem cell incorporation and repair. We hypothesize that glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) engineered NSCs will promote the recovery of spinal cord injury and that stem cells have more potential to facilitate both axonal repair and neuronal regeneration (in vivo), thereby promoting new synaptic connectivity more efficiently or directly than non- GDNF-expressing stem cells.