Events

Don’t miss the chance to hear one of the most innovative neuroscientists of our time sharing how his lab is pushing the boundaries of biology and medicine!

1. Discover how assembloids are revolutionising human brain modelling – bridging developmental biology and clinical medicine to unlock new insights into the human mind.
2. Be inspired by Professor Pasca’s journey – from his unwavering pursuit to understand incurable brain disorders to developing next-generation therapeutics as leader of the transformative lab at Stanford University.
3. Experience cutting-edge innovation – explore how assembloids technology is being used to build functional neural circuits and complex tissue systems, pushing the boundaries of biomedical science.

Remember to invite all your lab members, colleagues and students too, this is THE LECTURE to be at this spring 😍

✨Students: Join for the lecture lunch with Prof Pasca afterwards, info here:  https://forms.gle/oL26JP2LEiYdDvm57 

See you all there! 

Teemu Aitta-aho, PI (teemu.aitta-aho@helsinki.fi)

Suvi Laitinen, student host (suvi.laitinen@helsinki.fi)

Cannot wait to be there? Read more of his work: Lab webpage https://www.pascalab.org/ 

For the last decade, Prof. Paşca and his team have made highly interesting findings and created state-of-art assembloid method that has wide relevance in the fields of neuroscience, medicine and developmental biology. Most recently their determined effort for understanding neuropsychiatric diseases yielded a next-generation therapeutic approach to treat Timothy syndrome (type of genetic severe autism) (publ 1)💫 A few years back, Prof. Paşca and his team very elegantly succeeded in creating a functional cortex-spinal cord-muscle assembloid (publ 2) and in vivo implantation of those cortical assembloids (publ 3). They also showed that cortical organoids maturation process matches post-natal stages of human brain (publ 4)🤩

Paşca obtained his medical degree in 2007 from Hatieganu School of Medicine, Romania and completed his post-doctoral studies in Stanford University where he studies brain disorder genetics by developing hiPS neuron models from patient skin samples. Currently, he is Kenneth T. Norris, Jr. Professor of Psychiatry and Uytengsu Family Director of the Stanford Brain Organogenesis Program at Stanford University.

Selected publications:

Publ 1. Antisense oligonucleotide therapeutic approach for Timothy syndrome

Xiaoyu Chen, Fikri Birey, Min-Yin Li, Omer Revah, Rebecca Levy, Mayuri Vijay Thete, Noah Reis, Konstantin Kaganovsky, Massimo Onesto, Noriaki Sakai, Zuzana Hudacova, Jin Hao, Xiangling Meng, Seiji Nishino, John Huguenard, Sergiu P. Pașca. Nature. 2024 Apr; 628(8009):818-825. doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07310-6

Publ 2. Generation of Functional Human 3D Cortico-Motor Assembloids. Andersen J, Revah O, Miura Y, Thom N, Amin ND, Kelley KW, Singh M, Chen X, Thete MV, Walczak EM, Vogel H, Fan HC, Paşca SP. Cell. 2020 Dec 23;183(7):1913-1929.e26. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.11.017.

Publ 3. Maturation and circuit integration of transplanted human cortical organoids. Omer Revah, Felicity Gore, Kevin W. Kelley, Jimena Andersen, Noriaki Sakai, Xiaoyu Chen, Min-Yin Li, Fikri Birey, Xiao Yang, Nay L. Saw, Samuel W. Baker, Neal D. Amin, Shravanti Kulkarni, Rachana Mudipalli, Bianxiao Cui, Seiji Nishino, Gerald A. Grant, Juliet K. Knowles, Mehrdad Shamloo, John R. Huguenard, Karl Deisseroth & Sergiu P. Pașca. Nature. 2022 Oct 13; 610:319–326. doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-05277-w

Publ 4. Long-term maturation of human cortical organoids matches key early postnatal transitions. Gordon A, Yoon SJ, Tran SS, Makinson CD, Park JY, Andersen J, Valencia AM, Horvath S, Xiao X, Huguenard JR, Pașca SP, Geschwind DH. Nature Neuroscience. 2021 Mar;24(3):331-342. doi: 10.1038/s41593-021-00802-y.