Lorenz Studer MD

Lorenz P. Studer, MD, is director of the Center for Stem Cell Biology and a member of the Developmental Biology Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering. As a native of Switzerland, he received his MD and doctorate degree from the University of Bern, where he got involved in developing cell-based therapies for Parkinson's disease. He subsequently trained as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Ron McKay at the National Institutes of Health, pioneering the therapeutic application of neural stem cell-derived neurons in models of neurodegeneration.

In his laboratory, he has established techniques that can turn human pluripotent stem cells into many of the diverse cell types of the nervous system. He has also been among the first to realize the potential of patient-specific stem cells in modeling human disease and in drug discovery. Furthermore, he is currently leading a multidisciplinary consortium to pursue the clinical application of human stem cell-derived dopamine neurons for the treatment of Parkinson's disease.