The Neurons, Stem Cells and Development research group studies the behaviour of progenitor and stem cells in development, tissue regeneration and disease. A large proportion of our research is discovery research, aimed at deciphering basic regulatory mechanisms.
We aspire to apply our insight, developing novel approaches to diagnosis and therapy, and we establish models for rare or currently uncurable human congenital diseases.
Some of the key questions we are trying to answer are:
- How do cells know what to differentiate into?
- How do they find the right places to migrate to?
- Can we recapitulate normal development in organoids and generate cells for regeneration and therapy?
- How do cells derail from their normal path as happens in, for example in brain cancers?
To achieve our aims, we use state-of-the-art techniques such as CRISPR-Cas gene knockouts in chicken embryos, Xenopus frogs, zebrafish, tissue culture and organoid models.
Members of this research focus group span the School of Medicine, Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences and the School for Environment and Life Sciences, and we closely collaborate with the European Xenopus Resource Centre also located in Portsmouth.
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