Fanie Barnabé-Heider

Group members:
Fanie Barnabé-Heider, group leader

FANIE BARNABÉ-HEIDER
Department of Neuroscience
Fanie.Barnabe-Heider@ki.se

The discovery that stem cells, which can both self-renew and generate many types of differentiated cells, remain in the adult nervous system has opened a new research field for regenerative medicine. They represent an attractive therapeutic target to treat disorders, such as neurodegenerative diseases and injuries, where new neural cells are needed to restore function.

The main focus of our lab is to further our understanding of these neural stem cells from both the spinal cord and brain. We believe that studying the changes that occur during development to adulthood and upon injury and disease will help us identify molecular mechanisms regulating neural stem cell biology. We are using both in vivo models, including transgenic lines and in utero electroporation technique, and in vitro culture systems to study neural stem cells from different developmental stages and regions of the nervous system. We aim to characterize and utilize the regenerative potential of endogenous neural stem cells in order to further promote functional recovery upon disease and injury.

5 SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

Barnabé-Heider F., Göritz C., Sabelström H., Takebayashi H., Pfrieger F.W., Meletis K., and Frisén J. (2010) Origin of new glial cells in intact and injured adult spinal cord. Cell Stem Cell 7:470-482.

Meletis K.*, Barnabé-Heider F.*, Carlén M.*, Evergren E., Tomilin N. Shupliakov O., and Frisén J. (2008) Spinal cord injury reveals multilineage differentiation of ependymal cells. PLoS Biol. 6:e182. *These authors contributed equally

Barnabé-Heider F., and Frisén J. (2008) Stem cells for spinal cord repair. Cell Stem Cell 3:16-24.

Barnabé-Heider F., Meletis K., Erikson M, Bergmann O., Sabelström H., Harvey M.A., Mikkers H., and Frisén J. (2008) Genetic manipulation of adult mouse neurogenic niches by in vivo electroporation. Nat. Methods 5:189-196.

Barnabé-Heider F., Wasylnka J.A., Fernandes K.J.L., Porsche C., Sendtner M., Kaplan D.R., and Miller F.D. (2005) Evidence that embryonic neurons regulate the onset of cortical gliogenesis via cardiotrophin-1. Neuron 48:253-265.

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