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Scientific Advisory Panel

NeuroStemcell has established an international Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) to provide high level advice and monitoring of the project. The SAP will review the progress of the project annually and provide advice and guidance on relevance to the clinical approaches.

The following distinguished experts will serve on this panel:

Nancy Wexler

Higgins Professor of Neuropsychology at College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University (NY, USA)

A 20-year study of the world’s largest family with Huntington’s disease, in Venezuela, helped lead to the identification of the Huntington’s disease gene at the tip of human chromosome 4. This same study contributed in the mapping of other disease genes, including those responsible for familial Alzheimer’s disease, kidney cancer, two kinds of neurofibromatosis, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis(ALS), dwarfism and others. One result of this work was the development of a presymptomatic test which could tell who is carrying the fatal gene prior to the onset of symptoms.

Ole Isacson

Professor of Neurology (Neuroscience) at Harvard Medical School (Belmont, MA, USA)

Dr. Ole Isacson is Professor of Neurology (Neuroscience) at Harvard Medical School. He is the Director of the Center for Neuroregeneration Research/Neuroregeneration Laboratories at McLean Hospital and an NIH Udall Parkinson’s Disease Research Center of Excellence grant awardee. Dr. Isacson is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Harvard NeuroDiscovery Center and Principal Faculty of Harvard Stem Celli Institute. He received his Medical Bachelor (1984) and Doctor of Medicine (a research doctoral degree in Medical Neurobiology, 1987) from the University of Lund in Sweden. In 1989, after a 2 year postdoctoral position at Cambridge University, England, Dr. Isacson was recruited to Harvard as an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience and there established a small independent research laboratory for his work on neuroregeneration. Over the last decade his original laboratory has grown to an internationally recognized academic research center for Parkinson’s disease and related disorders, funded by the NIH, DOD and private foundations. Dr. Isacson’s scientific models and studies of conceptually new therapies for neurodegenerative diseases have resulted in many new findings and clinical trials for Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease. He is Receiving Editor of the European Journal of Neuroscience and on the board of numerous scientific journals. He is a founding member and past President of the American Society for Neural Transplantation and Repair, and is the current President of the international Cell Transplant Society, CTS (branch of The Transplantation Society, TTS). He serves as a scientific reviewer and advisor to the NIH, DOD and many Parkinson community groups. Dr. Isacson has received several international prizes, research awards and lectureships. He is author or co-author of over 200 scientific research publications in neuroscience and neurology, and 3 books in his field.

William Langston

Founder, CEO & Chief Scientific Officer of The Parkinson’s Institute (California)

Dr. J. William Langston is the founder, CEO, and Scientific Director of the Parkinson’s Institute. He is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Medicine and was formerly a faculty member at Stanford University and Chairman of Neurology at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose, California. Dr. Langston gained national and international recognition in 1982 for the discovery of the link between a “synthetic heroin” and parkinsonism. This substance, known as MPTP, is selectively toxic to the same nerve cells in the brain, which die in Parkinson’s disease. The discovery of the biologic effects of this compound led to a renaissance of the basic and clinical research in Parkinson’s disease.

Ron D.G Mckay

Chief of the Laboratory of Molecular biology at NINDS (Washington, USA)

Dr. McKay studied at the University of Edinburgh under the tutelage of Edwin Southern examining DNA organization and chromosome structure. He received postdoctoral training at University of Oxford. In 1978 he became a senior staff investigator at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory where he started working on the interaction of SV40 T-antigen with the specific binding site at the viral origin of replication and the molecular organization of the nervous system. Joining the MIT faculty in 1984, Dr. McKay continued to examine different aspects of neuronal development. In 1993 he became chief of the Laboratory of Molecular biology at NINDS. His laboratory is studying stem cell differentiation.