Day Four
Transformation

• Understand the fundamentals of human brain assembly both in vivo and in vitro using stem cell derived models (organoids and assembloids)

• Learn about the applications of human cellular models for understanding human neuropsychiatric disorders.

A critical challenge in understanding the programs underlying development, assembly and disease of the human brain is the lack of direct access to intact, functioning human neural tissue for detailed investigation and manipulation. Dr Pasca will first describe how his laboratory has been leveraging instructive signals to develop, starting from human pluripotent stem cells, self-organizing neural organoids resembling specific domains of the nervous system. He will next introduce a novel self-organizing cellular preparation named an assembloid that he created to model cell migration and circuit in the developing human nervous system. Lastly, he will illustrate how organoids and assembloids can be used to study development, evolution and to model genetic neuropsychiatric disease.

Lecture up to .75 hour Basic Sciences, AGD Subject Code 010

Sergiu P. Pasca, MD is the Kenneth T. Norris, Jr. Endowed Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and the Uytengsu Family Founding Director of the Stanford Brain Organogenesis Program. He is a CZI Ben Barres Investigator and a Chan Zuckerberg BioHub Investigator.

Professor Pasca is a physician by training and he is interested in understanding the rules governing human brain assembly and the mechanisms of disease. His laboratory at Stanford introduced the use of instructive signals for reproducibly deriving self-organizing organoids that resemble domains of the human nervous system (now known as regionalized neural organoids), he pioneered a modular platform that he named assembloids to study migration and circuit formation, and he developed integrated human circuits in living animals following transplantation. Professor Pasca systematically applied these stem cell models to gain insights into human physiology, evolution and disease, including by developing new therapeutic approaches. He extensively supported hundreds of labs in implementing these techniques through courses and led group efforts with researchers around the world to advance this new research area.

Professor Pasca was named a Visionary in Medicine and Science by the New York Times. He is a Knight of the Order of Merit and a Doctor Honoris Causa. He was featured as a physician-scientist by Nature Medicine, was a NYSCF Robertson Investigator and a TED 2022 Speaker.

He is the recipient of the Vilcek Award for Creative Biomedical Promise (2018), the National Institute of Mental Health BRAINS Award (2015), the MQ Award for Transforming Mental Health (2014), the A.E. Bennett Award in Biological Psychiatry (2018), the Folch-Pi Neurochemistry Award (2017), the Günter Blobel Award for Cell Biology (2018), the Daniel E. Efron Award in Neuropsychopharmacology (2018), a Breakthrough in Life Sciences Prize (2020) from Falling Walls, the International Basic Science Schizophrenia Prize (2021), the Joseph Altman Award in Developmental Neuroscience (2021), the Theodore Reich Award (2021), the Judson Daland Prize from the American Philosophical Society (2021), the 13th IBRO-Kemali Neuroscience Award (2022), and the CINP Sumitomo/Sunovion Award (2023).