Lorenz Studer


Lorenz Studer is a Swiss biologist. He is the founder and director of the Center for Stem Cell Biology at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. He is a developmental biologist and neuroscientist who is pioneering the generation of midbrain dopamine neurons for transplantation and clinical applications. Currently, he is a member of the Developmental Biology Program and Department of Neurosurgery at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and a Professor of Neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, NY.
In 2015, he was named a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship for his innovative work on stem cell and Parkinson's disease research.

Research

In 1998, while at the lab of Ronald D. McKay at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, he developed techniques that facilitate the generation of dopamine cells, the primary cell type affected in Parkinson's disease in vitro from dividing precursor cells. He successfully demonstrated that upon transplantation, these newly developed dopaminergic neurons can improve clinical symptoms in Parkinsonian rat models.
Over the years, he has developed a variety of novel cell engineering strategies for developing specific neural cell types in culture. Most notably, he has devised protocols for the transition of human pluripotent stem cells into neural and neural crest tissues and for the generation of functional dopaminergic neurons in large-scale quantities. In long-term studies, Studer demonstrated that these cells are non-tumorigenic, can integrate into the host brain and may serve as functional replacements for the substantia nigra dopamine neurons which die in Parkinson's disease.
As of 2015, he is continuing to work on initiating clinical trials for transplantation using lab grown dopaminergic neurons to treat Parkinson's disease. The researchers involved in the clinical trial efforts anticipate that by the end of 2017, it may be possible to submit an IND application to the United States FDA for a clinical trial in Parkinson's patients using ES cell-derived dopamine neurons.
Current research efforts also include directing the fate and age of human pluripotent stem cells, and using pluripotent stem cells as valuable tools for modeling human diseases such as Familial Dysautonomia, Hirschsprung's disease, neurodevelopmental disorders, as well as melanocyte-related diseases.
Other major contributions include the directed differentiation of nuclear transfer embryonic stem cells and parthenogenetic stem cells into specific neuron types. His lab was also the first to demonstrate "therapeutic cloning" in a mouse model of a central nervous system disorder.

Education and career

Studer, a native of Switzerland, graduated from medical school in 1991 and earned his neuroscience doctoral degree in 1994 at the University of Bern. There, he worked with Christian Spenger, culminating in the first clinical trial of fetal tissue transplantation for Parkinson's disease in Switzerland in 1995. The following year, he joined Ronald McKay's lab at the National Institute of Health to investigate how neural cells could be isolated, cultured, and differentiated to produce neurons with the aim of restoring brain function in Parkinson's disease mouse models.
In 2000, Studer moved to New York City where he embarked on his own research program at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center with a focus on exploring stem cells and brain repair. He also established the Sloan-Kettering Center for Stem Cell Biology and has been involved in a number of stem cell research committees and initiatives including the Tri-Institutional Stem Cell Initiative,, Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's disease research, and the New York Stem Cell Foundation.
In 2016, Studer became a scientific cofounder of BlueRock Therapeutics, a biotech company to develop induced pluripotent stem cell therapies.

Awards and memberships