Karim Nayernia ( fa, کریم نیرنیا) is an Iranian biomedical scientist and a world expert on stem cell biology and Personalized medicine. He carried out pioneering work that has the potential to lead to future therapies for a range of

medical condition A disease is a particular abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure or function (biology), function of all or part of an organism, and that is not immediately due to any external injury. Diseases are often known to be medica ...

s such as

heart disease Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a class of diseases that involve the heart or blood vessels. CVD includes coronary artery diseases (CAD) such as angina and myocardial infarction (commonly known as a heart attack). Other CVDs include stroke, hea ...

Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...

and male infertility. His team was the first in the world to isolate a new type of stem cell from adult mouse

testes A testicle or testis (plural testes) is the male reproductive gland or gonad in all bilaterians, including humans. It is homologous to the female ovary. The functions of the testes are to produce both sperm and androgens, primarily testoster ...

(male sex glands), called spermatagonial

stem cell In multicellular organisms, stem cells are undifferentiated or partially differentiated cells that can differentiate into various types of cells and proliferate indefinitely to produce more of the same stem cell. They are the earliest type o ...

s. It was able to show that some of these stem cells, called multipotent adult germline stem cells (maGSCs), turned into heart, muscle, brain and other cells. Prof Nayernia and his team proposed that similar cells could be extracted from men using a simple testicular biopsy. On the basis of these cells, new stem cell techniques could be developed in order to treat a variety of illnesses.

Academic career

Karim Nayernia is an

alumnus Alumni (singular: alumnus (masculine) or alumna (feminine)) are former students of a school, college, or university who have either attended or graduated in some fashion from the institution. The feminine plural alumnae is sometimes used for grou ...

of the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...

, where he had defended his dissertation in 1993. He worked at the university until 2006, when he started to work at the

Newcastle University Newcastle University (legally the University of Newcastle upon Tyne) is a UK public university, public research university based in Newcastle upon Tyne, North East England. It has overseas campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. The university is ...

. In 2003, he got the professorship (Habilitation) in Molecular Human Genetics from Medical Faculty of Georg-August University in Göttingen and in 2006 Professorship for Stem Cell Biology from the Newcastle University

Institute of Human Genetics An institute is an organisational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countries, institutes can ...

.
In 2009, he created human sperm-like cells from male stem cells in the laboratory for the first time. Previously, in 2006, he used sperm created from embryonic stem cells to impregnate mice. The mice produced seven pups, although one died and the other six had health problems. In 2010, he discovered a new marker for detection of breast cancer stem cells. This findings define this novel marker and its effector signaling pathways as key factors in the proliferation and survival of breast cancer stem cells. He is working now on projects in the field of personalized medicine and director and founder of the International Center for Personalized Medicine (p7medicine.com) and GENEOCELL company focusing on stem cell technologies and cell therapy. He is Director of International Stem Cell Academy which was established in 2016 (stemcell-academy.com) focusing on education of new scientists in the field of stem cell sciences at international level. He is currently director of International Center for Personalized Medicine in Düsseldorf/Germany (www.icpm.center) and Director of International Stem Cell Academy (www.stemcell-academy.com).

References

External links

www.icpm.center

* ttps://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11601-bone-stem-cells-turned-into-primitive-sperm-cells/ Newscientist.com* *
The Guardian articleThe Guardian articleBBC article
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nayernia, Karim Iranian medical researchers Academics of Newcastle University Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Biomedical engineers