Wange Lu Assistant Professor Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Keck School of Medicine Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research

Education:
BS 1990 Molecular Biology - Nankai University, P.R. China
MS 1993 Molecular Biology - Beijing University, P.R. China
PhD 1998 Virology - Harvard Medical School, Boston Massachusettes

Postdoctoral Research Fellowship:
1999 - 2005 California Institute of Technology

Started at USC: 2006

Research Topics: Stem Cell Biology, Cellular Neurobiology, Signal Transduction, Neurogenetics

Research Description

Human nervous system consists of billions of neurons and their supporting cells. These cells originally come from neural stem cells. During brain development, neural stem cells respond to the surrounding environment by either proliferation or differentiation. The molecular mechanisms underlying the development of neural stem cells and neurons are far from clear. Our laboratory studies the molecular mechanisms of neural stem cell proliferation and differentiation. Particularly, we are interested in Wnt signaling in neural stem cells and neurons.

We focus our efforts on an atypical receptor tyrosine kinase named Ryk. Ryk in Drosophila is required for learning, memory and axon guidance. We and others have identified Ryk as a new receptor for Wnt, a secreted glycoprotein that play important roles in cell proliferation and differentiation. Using Ryk siRNA transgenic mice, we have found that Ryk was required for axon guidance and neurite outgrowth induced by Wnt. Ryk also regulates gene expression from nuclear factor Tcf. Many questions remain on Ryk. For example, what is the signal transduction pathway of Ryk? How does it interact with the canonical beta-catenin pathway? How does this pathway regulate the development of neural stem cells and neurons? These questions are the primary focus of our laboratory.

Another line of research in the lab is to study human embryonic stem cell proliferation and differentiation. Human ES cells are pluripotent and can differentiate into all cell types in our body. They have great potential for cell replacement therapy for degenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington disease, etc.. We use genomic and proteomic approaches to find the machinery that hES cells use to control proliferative self-renewal and differentiation. We are also interested in studying human neurological diseases using hES cells as a model. In a long run, we hope to manipulate cell signaling events to induce hES cell proliferation, direct hES cell differentiation and protect neurons from pathological death.