 |
| |  |
| |  |
| |  |
| |  |
| |  |
| Jim Spudich PHOTO |
Overview Spudich has been heavily involved in the establishment of a new Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (inStem) on the campus of the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), a leading biological research institute in India with which he has had a longstanding affiliation. InStem is using a large spectrum of approaches to both basic research and its clinical application in the frontier areas of stem cell and regeneration biology. InStem is breaking down the walls of national borders as well as of scientific disciplines and traditional lab arrangements. In its new facility, groups of principal investigators and their interdisciplinary teams are sharing large, open lab areas that encourage collaboration. An advanced technology center provides technological capabilities that dramatically speed up as well as broaden the scope of the research. Dr. John Mercer, recently on sabbatical in Spudich's lab at Stanford, is now full time at inStem where he is introducing technologies developed by Spudich's lab at Stanford for studying mutations in the molecular motors that drive the human heartbeat. These mutated motors are associated with deterioration of the heart muscle that can cause sudden death at any age. These inherited cardiomyopathy mutations occur in one of every 500 people. Dr. Mercer's wife and research assistant, Colleen Silan, is helping to set up the mouse genetics facility at inStem as well as the infrastructure of the newly created building on the NCBS campus that houses the Spudich/Mercer lab. Additional personnel from Stanford will visit Bangalore to assist the team there, and Indian graduate students and postdoctoral fellows will visit Stanford in an international exchange program. |
John Mercer |
|
Colleen Silan
|
|
| Tejas Gupte |
|
| Farah Hague |
Spudich Lab | Stanford Biochemistry Dept | Copyright © 2013