BrighteLife Laboratories- Stemgenyx

The spontaneous recovery of CNS disorders such as multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, stroke and trauma is hindered by the limited ability of vertebrate CNS to regenerate lost cells, replace damaged myelin and re-establish the functional neuronal connections. Stem cells with self-renewal and multi-lineage differentiation property have the potential to replace or repair damaged CNS.

We examine the mechanisms in the regulation of growth, self-renewal and differentiation of neural stem cells in culture and in the CNS. We test the use of stem cells to promote remyelination and CNS repair in EAE/MS, TBI and other neurological diseases.

We provide stem cell based assay service to identify effective drugs to promote self-renewal and differentiation of stem cells and their use in stem cell therapy in vitro and in animal models in vivo.

Human cancers often display heterogeneity, hierarchy of growth potential, plasticity and resistance to therapy. Multi-drug resistance and recurrence are some of the challenges in combating tumors. Recent studies have identified the presence of tumor stem cells and the failure to cure cancer has been attributed to the fact that typical therapies target rapidly growing tumor cells, while sparing tumor stem cells that are responsible for drug resistance, metastasis and recurrence.

We developed culture conditions to isolate, grow and expand brain tumor stem cells (BTSCs) in our laboratory. We discovered that the brain tumor stem cells display altered expression of nuclear receptors, stemness and apoptotic genes.

We provide cancer cell and stem cell based in vitro assay services to identify effective drugs in high throughput screening and for personalized medicine. We also provide in vivo drug testing services using cancer cell, cancer stem cell and cancer tissue xenograft models.