Stem cell therapies for neurological injury
Professor Divya Maitreyi Chari, Professor of Neural Tissue Engineering at Keele University, will give the opening lecture in Keele's programme of Inaugural Professorial Lectures 2015-16, on Monday, 19 October 2015, in the Westminster Theatre, Chancellor's Building, on the University campus. The title of her lecture is: "Stem cell therapies for neurological injury: Developing realistic solutions for clinical use".
Injuries to the brain and spinal cord can result in permanent neurological damage given the poor self-repair capacity of those regions. Research in the past few decades has shown that transplantation of repair mediating stem cells can help to repair areas of injury, and clinical trials have started in some centres.
However, there are still major hurdles to be overcome in order to develop effective cell transplantation therapies, such as the ability to track the fate of transplanted cells, engineer these to express chemicals that are beneficial for repair and to prevent cell loss during surgical transplantation procedures. This talk will explore new strategies in the field of biomedical engineering to overcome these challenges and improve cell transplantation therapies for future clinical use.
Professor Chari gained a doctorate in Developmental Neurobiology from Oxford University, then moved to Cambridge Centre for Brain Repair, to study causes for failure of regenerative mechanisms in neurological injury. She held a prestigious Multiple Sclerosis Society Junior Fellowship at Cambridge from 2003. She joined Keele University's new medical school in 2007. Her laboratory investigates the benefits of new biomedical engineering tools for neurological repair. Her research has been supported by a wide range of funding agencies and involves a wide international collaborative network.
Keele's programme of Inaugural Lectures are given by newly established professors within the University and aim to give an illuminating account of the speaker's own subject specialism. The lectures, which start at 6 pm in the Westminster Theatre, are chaired by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Trevor McMillan.
The lecture is free and open to all.