Our Primary Research Areas in Lu Lab

Alzheimer's Disease

Amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles were recognized more than a century ago as the pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Yet the relative contribution of these two lesions... read more here

Parkinson's Disease 

Parkinson's Disease (PD) is the second mos common neurodegenerative disease and the most common movement disorder caused by rather selective degeneration of dopaminiergic neurons. Most cass of PD are sporadic with unknown causes. Several lines of evidence point to mitochondral dysfuntion as the driving force in PD pathogenesis, but the...read more here

Neural Stem Cell Biology

Being able to perpetuate their multipotent states (self-renew) and generate lineage-committed specialized cells (differentiate) is a defining property of all stem cells. Understanding how self-renewal versus differentiation of stem cells is balanced is aof vital significance, sunce deregulation of this process can lead to either stem cell losss or uncontrolled...read more here

Cancer Stem Cell Modeling

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are rare tumor cells with tumor-propagating ability that exhibit striking resemblance to normal tissue stem cells (SCs). The orgin of CSCs and the mechanisms underlying their self-renewal and maintenance are poorly understood, and a key goal of stem cell biology is to determine how to therapeutically target CSCs with out inadvertently...read more here

Neurodegenerative Disease Modeling Using Reprogrammed Human Neurons

A key bottlenect in neurodegenerative disease research adn drug development is the lack of access to the human cell types that matter most to the disease. In PD, for example, the disease-relevant dopaminergic neurons (DNs) are very rare cell typeds located deep in the brainstem. It is both impractiacla nd unethical to collect such cells for research when the patients are still alive. Therefore, most disease mechanism...read more here

Pontocerebellar Hypoplasia

The molecular and cellular pathology of the neonatal/fetal disease Pontocerebellar Hypoplasia (PCH) is poorly understood. PCH is a rare congenital disorder displayin autosomal recessive inheritance characterized by hypoplasia and atrophy of the crebellar cortex, dentate nucli, pontine nuclei and inferrior olives. A growing number of mutated genes have...read more here