The major research goal of my program is to see the use of stem cell therapy become a major treatment for debilitating neurological diseases. Five different but concurrently run sets of experiments aim to advance our understanding and use of neural stem cell therapies. The five approaches are: 1) The development and refinement of new in vitro methodologies that, in part, rely on insights from studies of hematopoiesis to selectively expand particular stem or progenitor cell populations and also control their differentiation into particular types of neurons; 2) The discovery of genes involved in stem cell growth and differentiation using clonal populations of stem/progenitor cells as a model for neurogenesis, by way of creating cDNA libraries from normal and neurological disease brain; 3) Use of animal models of neurodegenerative disease by a dedicated transplant group in the lab that is refining methods of integrating grafted stem/progenitor cells into altered adult brain circuitries; 4) Stem cell plasticity and homing in a variety of tissues; and 5) Studying distinct stem/progenitor cell populations as a potential source of primary tumors.