NSF Award
1643572
The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to solve problems for customers in research and therapeutics that rely on the generation of dopamine neurons. Our technology significantly increases the efficacy of dopamine neuron generation over current methods. This I-Corps project will increase our understanding of how our technology can be developed into a product that best suits customer needs. Customers may either directly work, or supply reagents to those who work in areas including Parkinson?s disease, schizophrenia, depression and drug addiction. Translational and clinical studies that rely on generation of dopamine neurons are hindered by the high cost and scarcity of biologic components required to generate dopamine neurons. These restrictions put a strain on research resources and prevent the potential scaling of dopamine neuron production for therapies, such as cell replacement therapies for Parkinson's disease. Reducing these limitations may profoundly affect the speed at which new treatments and therapeutics can be developed.<br/><br/>This I-Corps project will define the essential components and features of our technology that our customers need for their projects. The dopamine neurons that our customers use are generated by differentiation from neural stem cells, human embryonic stem cells and/or induced pluripotent stem cells and require multiple steps, expensive components and produce variable efficiency between attempts. Most of these approaches use genetic or biologic factors that have previously been characterized and demonstrated to influence dopamine neuron production. This technology uses a unique, modified factor that can drive the highly efficient (>90%) conversion of neural progenitors in a living embryo into cells that have multiple hallmarks of dopamine neurons or their progenitors. These robust results indicate great potential for the technology to be translated into a product that meets customer needs, such as the generation of dopamine neurons by human embryonic stem cells, induced pluripotent stem cells as well as by neural progenitors. This I-Corps project will help transform this unique technology into a product that users can apply to solve some of the most challenging neurological problems.
