Human Genetics & Embryology

Nady Celine Golestaneh

Nady Celine Golestaneh
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular & Cellular Biology
Georgetown University School of Medicine, USA

Biography

Dr. Nady Golestaneh is an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Cellular Biology She received her PhD and MS degrees in Biology and Pharmacology of Aging from University of Paris VI Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris France and her BS in Cellular Biology and Biochemistry from University of Paris VII Jussieu in Paris France She performed postdoctoral training at NIH NEI and Johns Hopkins University before joining Georgetown University School of Medicine in 2005 Recently she has shown that male germline stem cells can become pluripotent capable of differentiating into the three primordial germ layers offering the possibility of autologous cellbased therapy in degenerative diseases In parallel Golestaneh’s lab has demonstrated that the iPS cells can be differentiated into functional retinal pigment epithelium that could be prominent candidates for regeneration therapies in agerelated macular degeneration AMD Dr Golestaneh’s innovative work in the area of stem cells research has earned her several prestigious national and international awards and her research is supported by NIH grant.

Research Interest

Dr. Golestaneh′s lab is committed to researching how aging mechanisms affect the cells and induce diseases such as aged-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of blindness among people over 55 years of age in the western world. Recent generation of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells from somatic cells has the potential to accelerate the implementation of stem cells for clinical treatment of degeneration diseases by bypassing immune rejection and ethical problems using patient-specific iPS cells. Using patient-specific iPS cells Dr. Golestaneh is investigating the mechanisms that induce the AMD and is developing ways to stop this disease from occurring. One of the essential reasons for the lack of understanding of the underlying pathophysiology of human AMD is the absence of reliable experimental models that recapitulate all features of the disease. Generation of AMD patient-specific hiPS cells and subsequent differentiation into retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) would provide in vitro models that are otherwise experimentally unattainable. Golestaneh’s lab has shown that the iPS cells can be differentiated into functional RPE that could be prominent candidates for regeneration therapies inAMD. In addition, the patient-specific iPS cells are used in her lab as an in vitro model to study the genetics of AMD disease and to eventually develop targeted drugs for treatment of AMD. In addition, Golestaneh’s lab is interested in using the human iPS (hiPS) cells as an in vitro model of human aging and has created hiPS cells from young and aged donors to subsequently differentiate them into somatic cells in order to study human aging mechanisms. The iPS cells would be of great interest to elucidate the genetics of human aging mechanisms, since recent studies have shown that telomeres are elongated in iPS cells compared to the parental differentiated cells, and the somatic mitochondria within hiPS cells revert to animmature ESC-like state and hiPS and hES cells, although not identical, share similar mitochondrial properties. In addition she investigates the influence of human KL gene in normal and pathological aging to understand the mechanisms of KL-induced human aging.