Sally Temple

Last updated
Sally Temple
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater Cambridge University, University College London, Columbia University
Awards MacArthur Fellows Program

Jacob Javitz Merit Award

Citizen Laureate Award
Scientific career
Fields Neuroscience
Institutions Albany Medical College

Sally Temple is an American developmental neuroscientist in Albany, New York. She is a co-founder and scientific director for The Neural Stem Cell Institute and is a professor of Neuroscience and Neuropharmacology at Albany Medical College [1] Temple is also the principal investigator in her laboratory that focuses on neural stem cells and therapies for neurological-related disorders [2]

Contents

Life

Temple received her B.A. from Cambridge University. She then continued her PhD education at the University College London and competed her postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University. Her focus at this time was on optic nerve development. [2]

Temple became a pioneer in the field of stem cell research when she discovered that the embryonic mammalian brain contained a rare stem-like cell. After this discovery, she focused on neural stem cells and how they develop over time and produce progeny. [2]

She has since been labelled an innovator in the field of stem cells, specifically neural stem cells, which are potentially applicable in cell replacement therapy for ailments like spinal cord injury and neurodegeneration. She is the president and co-founder of StemCulture, LLC., a company created by scientists in order to create innovative products and promote scientific research. [3]

In 2010 she and John J. Nigro were recipients of the 2010 Citizen Laureate Awards. This award is meant to recognize leaders in the fields of business, industry, government, and academia. [3]

Previously, she was a fellow of the Alden March Bioethics Institute. [4]

Temple currently is the scientific director of the Neural Stem Cell Institute. She also is a faculty member for Albany Medical College, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and SUNY Albany. [4] Dr. Temple is married to Dr. Jeffrey Stern, a retinal surgeon, who is the other co-founder of the Regenerative Research Foundation and Neural Stem Cell Institute. [5]

She is a member of the Editorial Board for Developmental Cell .

Research

Temple's current laboratory focuses primarily on neural stem cells and the development for therapies related to eye, brain, and spinal cord disorders. [2]

One of her major accomplishments in her field is the isolation and culturing of a progenitor cell line of glia. This led to the discovery that the number of cell divisions the cell underwent was determined by internal counting mechanisms. [4] This research also led to her indicating specific markers on progenitor cell lines and external signaling molecules that are involved in the maintenance of neural stem cells. [1]

Some of her other research has indicated that the limited success of embryonic stem cell transplants in neurological cases may be due to the introduction of cells at the wrong developmental stage. This may have a huge impact on neurological therapies using stem cells as a future of medicine. [1]

She has also provided evidence in her field that has shown that progenitor cells gradually lose the ability to divide. She established that the Foxg1 gene is important in this, because a reduction in its expression results in a delay in this process. [4]

As president of StemCulture, LLC. she is currently working on a new study involving a new product, StemBeads FGF2. [2] StemCulture, LLC. describe this product as a growth factor supplement that is able to grow FGF2 dependent stem cell cultures in a more efficient way. [6] She also recently identified an important human central nervous stem cell that may lead to important developments in retinal disease treatments. [7] In 2015, she attended a RPI stem cell and bioengineering meeting and spoke about her retinal pigmented epithelial (RPE) research. She discussed how her team has been furthering their research into culturing human retinal stem cells and the use of RPE cells in therapy for age-related macular degeneration. [8]

Patents

Temple has a large number of patents related to neural stem cells and for various methods for culture undifferentiated cells. [9]

Awards

In 2003 Dr. Temple received the Jacob Javitz Merit Award from the National Institute of Health. [2] She was then awarded the MacArthur Fellowship in 2008. This award in considered a no-strings attached grant intended to supplement the winner's potential for creativity. [4] Dr. Temple was also the recipient of the 2010 Citizen Laureate Awards. This was awarded to her by The University at Albany Foundation for her research into treatments for both macular degeneration and Parkinson's disease. [3]

Publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stem cell</span> Undifferentiated biological cells that can differentiate into specialized cells

In multicellular organisms, stem cells are undifferentiated or partially differentiated cells that can change into various types of cells and proliferate indefinitely to produce more of the same stem cell. They are the earliest type of cell in a cell lineage. They are found in both embryonic and adult organisms, but they have slightly different properties in each. They are usually distinguished from progenitor cells, which cannot divide indefinitely, and precursor or blast cells, which are usually committed to differentiating into one cell type.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Retina</span> Part of the eye

The retina is the innermost, light-sensitive layer of tissue of the eye of most vertebrates and some molluscs. The optics of the eye create a focused two-dimensional image of the visual world on the retina, which then processes that image within the retina and sends nerve impulses along the optic nerve to the visual cortex to create visual perception. The retina serves a function which is in many ways analogous to that of the film or image sensor in a camera.

The development of the nervous system, or neural development (neurodevelopment), refers to the processes that generate, shape, and reshape the nervous system of animals, from the earliest stages of embryonic development to adulthood. The field of neural development draws on both neuroscience and developmental biology to describe and provide insight into the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which complex nervous systems develop, from nematodes and fruit flies to mammals.

Samuel Weiss is a Canadian neurobiologist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adult stem cell</span> Multipotent stem cell in the adult body

Adult stem cells are undifferentiated cells, found throughout the body after development, that multiply by cell division to replenish dying cells and regenerate damaged tissues. Also known as somatic stem cells, they can be found in juvenile, adult animals, and humans, unlike embryonic stem cells.

Neuroepithelial cells, or neuroectodermal cells, form the wall of the closed neural tube in early embryonic development. The neuroepithelial cells span the thickness of the tube's wall, connecting with the pial surface and with the ventricular or lumenal surface. They are joined at the lumen of the tube by junctional complexes, where they form a pseudostratified layer of epithelium called neuroepithelium.

Neural stem cells (NSCs) are self-renewing, multipotent cells that firstly generate the radial glial progenitor cells that generate the neurons and glia of the nervous system of all animals during embryonic development. Some neural progenitor stem cells persist in highly restricted regions in the adult vertebrate brain and continue to produce neurons throughout life. Differences in the size of the central nervous system are among the most important distinctions between the species and thus mutations in the genes that regulate the size of the neural stem cell compartment are among the most important drivers of vertebrate evolution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Progenitor cell</span> Cell that differentiates into one or a few cell types

A progenitor cell is a biological cell that can differentiate into a specific cell type. Stem cells and progenitor cells have this ability in common. However, stem cells are less specified than progenitor cells. Progenitor cells can only differentiate into their "target" cell type. The most important difference between stem cells and progenitor cells is that stem cells can replicate indefinitely, whereas progenitor cells can divide only a limited number of times. Controversy about the exact definition remains and the concept is still evolving.

In biology, explant culture is a technique to organotypically culture cells from a piece or pieces of tissue or organ removed from a plant or animal. The term explant can be applied to samples obtained from any part of the organism. The extraction process is extensively sterilized, and the culture can be typically used for two to three weeks.

Neural tissue engineering is a specific sub-field of tissue engineering. Neural tissue engineering is primarily a search for strategies to eliminate inflammation and fibrosis upon implantation of foreign substances. Often foreign substances in the form of grafts and scaffolds are implanted to promote nerve regeneration and to repair damage caused to nerves of both the central nervous system (CNS) and peripheral nervous system (PNS) by an injury.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Precursor cell</span> Partially differentiated usually unipotent cell

In cell biology, precursor cells—also called blast cells—are partially differentiated, or intermediate, and are sometimes referred to as progenitor cells. A precursor cell is a stem cell with the capacity to differentiate into only one cell type, meaning they are unipotent stem cells. In embryology, precursor cells are a group of cells that later differentiate into one organ. However, progenitor cells are considered multipotent.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first clinical trial in the United States involving human embryonic stem cells on January 23, 2009. Geron Corporation, a biotechnology firm located in Menlo Park, California, originally planned to enroll ten patients with spinal cord injuries to participate in the trial. The company hoped that GRNOPC1, a product derived from human embryonic stem cells, would stimulate nerve growth in patients with debilitating damage to the spinal cord. The trial began in 2010 after being delayed by the FDA because cysts were found on mice injected with these cells, and safety concerns were raised.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lineage Cell Therapeutics</span> Clinical-stage biotechnology company developing novel cell therapies

Lineage Cell Therapeutics, Inc. is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing novel cell therapies for unmet medical needs. Lineage’s programs are based on its robust proprietary cell-based therapy platform and associated in-house development and manufacturing capabilities. With this platform Lineage develops and manufactures specialized, terminally differentiated human cells from its pluripotent and progenitor cell starting materials. These differentiated cells are developed to either replace or support cells that are dysfunctional or absent due to degenerative disease or traumatic injury or administered as a means of helping the body mount an effective immune response to cancer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neuronal lineage marker</span> Endogenous tag expressed in different cells along neurogenesis and differentiated cells

A neuronal lineage marker is an endogenous tag that is expressed in different cells along neurogenesis and differentiated cells such as neurons. It allows detection and identification of cells by using different techniques. A neuronal lineage marker can be either DNA, mRNA or RNA expressed in a cell of interest. It can also be a protein tag, as a partial protein, a protein or an epitope that discriminates between different cell types or different states of a common cell. An ideal marker is specific to a given cell type in normal conditions and/or during injury. Cell markers are very valuable tools for examining the function of cells in normal conditions as well as during disease. The discovery of various proteins specific to certain cells led to the production of cell-type-specific antibodies that have been used to identify cells.

Isabelle M. Germano is a neurosurgeon and professor of neurosurgery, neurology, and oncology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital. She is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. Germano works with image-guided brain and spine surgery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeanne Loring</span> American biologist

Jeanne Frances Loring is an American stem cell biologist, developmental neurobiologist, and geneticist. She is the founding Director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine and emeritus professor at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. She has founded two biotechnology companies, Arcos BioScience (1999) and Aspen Neuroscience (2018)

Masayo Takahashi is a Japanese medical physician, ophthalmologist and stem cell researcher.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cell-based therapies for Parkinson's disease</span> Treatment method for Parkinsons disease

Cell-based therapies for Parkinson's disease include various investigational procedures which transplant specific populations of cells into the brains of people with Parkinson's disease. The investigation of cell transplantation therapies followed the discovery that the death of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta resulted in the motor symptoms of the disease. Thus, cell transplantation has focused on various dopamine producing cells throughout the body.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stem cell therapy for macular degeneration</span> Use of stem cells to treat macular degeneration

Stem cell therapy for macular degeneration is the use of stem cells to heal, replace dead or damaged cells of the macula in the retina. Stem cell based therapies using bone marrow stem cells as well as retinal pigment epithelial transplantation are being studied. A number of trials have occurred in humans with encouraging results.

Jane Caroline Sowden is a British biologist who is Professor of Developmental Biology and Genetics at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust. Her research investigates eye formation and repair by developing a better understanding the genetic pathways that regulate eye development.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Sally Temple, Ph.D., Scientific Director - Neural Stem Cell Institute, Rensselaer NY". Neural Stem Cell Institute, Rensselaer NY. Retrieved 2015-11-19.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Sally Temple - StemCulture". StemCulture. Retrieved 2015-11-19.
  3. 1 2 3 "Stem Cell Researcher Made University at Albany Citizen Laureate - University at Albany-SUNY". www.albany.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-19.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 "Sally Temple — MacArthur Foundation". www.macfound.org. Retrieved 2015-11-19.
  5. "Jeffrey Stern - StemCulture". StemCulture. Retrieved 2015-11-20.
  6. "You searched for stem beads fgf2 - StemCulture". StemCulture. Retrieved 2015-11-20.
  7. "Speaker - Cell Symposia: Stem cells in modeling and treating disease, November 21 - 23, 2013 Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, USA". www.cell-symposia-stemcells-modelingtreatingdisease.com. Archived from the original on 2015-11-20. Retrieved 2015-11-20.
  8. "Sally Temple on adult RPEs for vision impairment, IND, & more - The Niche". The Niche. 17 June 2015. Retrieved 2015-11-20.
  9. "Patents by Inventor Sally Temple Stern - Justia Patents Database". patents.justia.com. Retrieved 2015-11-20.