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August 17-18, 2017 | Toronto, Canada
ANNUAL BIOTECHNOLOGY CONGRESS
allied
academies
Ann Biol Sci, 2017
ISSN: 2348-1927
D
espite decades of investigations in both laboratory and
clinic, the pathophysiological mechanism of Alzheimer’s
disease (AD) still remains unknown. Current problem of
developing AD research is that many treatments have
been found to be very effective in AD animal models but
they failed to show significant effects in clinical trials. Thus,
establishment of an effective treatment in a model, which
represents pathophysiology of AD, is needed. Previously,
we were able to show improved cognitive function of
aged, memory-impaired animals through the implantation
of human neural stem cells (NSCs), which produced much
excitement throughout the research world and the overall
medical community; given the implication that this could
lead to a cure for all neurodegenerative diseases, including
AD. However, when we transplanted NSCs to a transgenic
animal model produced Amyloid-β (Aβ) plaque formation in
the brain by expressing familial AD mutant amyloid precursor
protein (APP), mimicking the pathological condition of AD,
we did not find any new neuronal development formed from
the donor cells. This indicates that transplantation of NSCs
by itself may not be a cure for AD. Here, we show that the
combination drug therapy of Posiphen (reduce APP level)
and NBI-18 (increase endogenous neural stem cell) increased
neurogenesis and significantly improved memory in the
transgenic AD mouse model. This combination therapy could
bring us an effective treatment for AD. I will further discuss
the use of iPS cell to confirm this efficacy
in vitro
3D human
AD brain model.
Speaker Biography
Kiminobu Sugaya is a Professor of Medicine in Burnett School of Biomedical Science,
College of Medicine, University of Central Florida (UCF) since 2004. He is a Director of
Multidisciplinary Neuroscience Alliance of UCF and a Chair of Central Florida Chapter
of Society for Neuroscience. He moved from Japan to Mayo Clinic, US as a Post-doc-
toral Researcher in 1992 when he was a Lecturer in Science University of Tokyo and
was promoted to be an Associate Consultant in 1994. Then he moved to University of
Illinois at Chicago as an Assistant Professor in 1997 and got promoted to an Associate
Professor in 2002. He has been conducting stem cell researches to treat neurodegen-
erative diseases by the adult stem cells. He recently received National Honor Plaque
of Panama for exceptional contribution to neuroscience based on his study on stem
cell therapies for neurodegenerative diseases from the President of Panama. His pub-
lication regarding improvement of memory in the aged animal by stem cell transplan-
tation was reported in Washington Post, BBC, NBC, ABC and other media in all over
the world. He is also a Founder and Chair of Progenicyte, which is a biotech company
holding his 67 patent licenses. Among those are a revolutionary process of creating IPS
(induced pluripotent stem) cells from a patient’s own cells and a novel pharmacological
approach to increase endogenous stem cells. With his proprietary technologies cover-
ing all aspects of stem cell manipulations, Progenicyte is launching services to include:
modified stem cell banking and a commercial product to increase cellular regeneration
which fights against aging.
e:
ksugaya@ucf.eduKiminobu Sugaya
University of Central Florida, USA
Pharmacological approaches for the neural regeneration; Alzheimer’s disease therapies
Kiminobu Sugaya, Ann Biol Sci, 2017, 5:3
DOI: 10.21767/2348-1927-C1-001