Day One: Int'l Conference of Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine for Neurodegenerative Diseases

April 22, 2010:

Dr. Kiessling and Dr. Shyr

The first day of the International Conference of Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine for Neurodegenerative Diseases began with a full auditorium in the beautiful and immaculate Tzu Chi Hospital conference center.

The conference was opened by Dr. Ann Kiessling and Dr. Ming-Hwang Shyr (Superintendent of Tzu Chi General Hospital) together they emphasized the importance of international cooperation in stem cell research. Dr. Kiessling said, “International scientific collaboration is absolutely fundamental to moving stem cell treatments forward as fast as possible.”

Dr. Kiessling’s talk, What is a Pluripotent Cell? And Is Pluripotency Important to Neuronal Differentiation? highlighted her recent research into the importance of circadian rhythms in stem cell biology. Discovering the impact of light and dark cycles for developing cells may be key to our understanding of developing stem cell lines.

Dr. Lin and Dr. Kiessling.

Professor John Lin of China Medical University Hospital, gave a talk titled, CD34 Stem Cell Implantation Enables the Regeneration of the Corticospinal Tract in Chronic Stroke Patients, which described treating stroke by implanting stem cells into the brain to repair damage.

Dr. Steve Stice of the University of Georgia’s talk, Advances in Differentiation and Survival of Neuronal Progenitor Cells Prior to Transplantation, described making neuronal stem cells from embryonic stem cells. Once developed, neuronal stem cells can be useful for both drug discovery and regenerative medicine.

Tzu Chi University Medical Students watch the conference.

And Assistant Professor Hung-Chih Kuo of the Academia Sinica in Taipei’s talk, Purification and Characterization of Transplantable Somatic Cell Types from Human Embryonic Stem Cells: A Neural Paradigms, described making neuronal stem cells that could be tracked following transplantation.

The day was concluded by a delicious, all vegetarian banquet prepared by the buddhist chefs at the Tzu Chi University Sphere of Lazuli Dinning Hall.

Dr. Wendy Cheng of ChinaSCINet (www.chinascinet.org) tells Dr. Steve Stice about the Still Thoughts Hall on the university campus.

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