Dustin R. Wakeman, PhD

Dr. Wakeman’s research goals are directed at determining the long-term value of stem cell based therapeutics in neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disease. His career interests include disease modeling, neural transplantation, and morphological and molecular changes in neurodegenerative diseases and aging. Dr. Wakeman’s research is primarily focused on pre-clinical testing of dopamine neurons derived from pluripotent stem cells, both human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells as a cell based strategy for dopamine replacement in Parkinson’s disease using a rationale course of animal models to predict translational clinical outcome. He is also utilizing pluripotent stem cells to develop new strategies to model and treat disorders of the central nervous system. The goal is to use patient derived iPSCs as an in vitro platform to model disease-specific phenotypes and develop new drugable targets, as well as in vivo to mimic human disease in the rodent and nonhuman primate brain. Dr. Wakeman has active research programs investigating Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease.