Sasha Verrijt

 Faculty of Health, Medicine & Life Sciences | Bachelor Biomedical Sciences

"Defining the Immunogenicity of Embryonic Stem Cell-derived Dopaminergic Neurons"

Sasha's elevator pitch
Stem-cell based therapies might prove to be long-term solutions to Parkinson’s Disease. This thesis investigated the immunogenicity of human-derived embryonic stem cell (hESC) grafts in a mouse model, as well as the difference in immunogenicity between MHC-knock out ESCs and wildtype ESCs. The current study depicted that the immunogenicity of in vivo matured A9 dopaminergic neurons is constant over three months post-transplantation, that the MHC-KO of hESCs was successful and that they could be matured into ventral midbrain-specific neural progenitor cells. The current research was performed in the lab of Prof. Roger Barker at the University of Cambridge.