Dr Steven Pollard

Interests

Glioma NS cell line induced to differentiate into oligodendrocytes (green) and neuronal-like cells (red)
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We recently developed protocols for the conversion of embryonic stem (ES) cells to tissue specific neural stem (NS) cells. NS cells can be maintained indefinitely in culture as adherent clonal cell lines. Similar cell lines have been isolated from foetal and adult CNS. Our current goals are to define the NS cell state and identify new markers that enable prospective isolation of these cells from foetal and adult tissues. We aim to elucidate the molecular mechanisms that control self-renewal and differentiation in NS cells and will hopefully extend any findings to brain cancer stem cells. Towards this goal we recently developed, in collaboration with Dr Peter Dirks (Toronto, Canada), a series of novel NS-like cells from human gliomas. These glioma NS cells will be used to understand the key genetic and epigenetic changes result in unconstrained self-renewal of cancer stem cells. These lines will also be used in cell based drug screening assays.

Research Focus

Keywords

neural stem cell

radial glia

glioma

in vitro culture

EGF signalling

Cancer sites

brain and central nervous system

Equipment

Bioinformatics

Cell culture

Confocal microscopy

DNA sequencing

Fluorescence microscopy

Gene expression profiling

Imaging

Immunohistochemistry

In situ hybridisation

In vivo modelling

Microarray

Microscopy

Model organisms

Mouse embryology

PCR

RNAi

Statistical analysis

Xenotransplantation