Arnold Kriegstein - USA
University of California
Professor Arnold Kriegstein is a clinical neurologist, the John Bowes Distinguished Professor of Stem Cell and Tissue Biology, and Founding Director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
Arnold Kriegstein oversees one of the largest and most comprehensive stem cell programs in the USA, encompassing over 70 laboratories focused on disorders of the heart, diabetes, cancer, and diseases of the nervous system.
He received his BA from Yale University and completed his MD and PhD degrees from New York University in 1977. He then obtained his residency training in Neurology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital, and Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. He has held academic appointments at Stanford University, Yale University, and Columbia University, and joined the Neurology Department at UCSF in 2004. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2008.
Arnold Kriegstein was the Chair of the International Society for Stem Cell Research Publications Committee, and served as Treasurer and Member of the Board from 2006- 2019. He is also the co-Chair of the Executive Committee of the Aga Khan University - Centre for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research and UCSF Research Capacity Development Program.
He has received numerous awards including Stanford University’s William M Hume Faculty Scholar; twice awarded the Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award from the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke; Solomon A Berson Medical Alumni Achievement Award in 2011; and the Weill Innovation Award 2016-2019.
Has numerous publications to his credit. His research focuses on the way in which neural stem and progenitor cells in the embryonic brain produce neurons, and how this information can be used for cell based therapies to treat diseases of the nervous system. His laboratory found that radial glial cells are neuronal stem cells in the developing brain, and also identified a second type of precursor cell produced by radial glial cells that is responsible for generating specific neuronal subtypes.
He has recently begun to characterize the progenitor cells within the developing human brain, to determine the genetic profiles of specific progenitor populations, and to explore how these cells contribute to the huge expansion of neuron number that characterizes human cerebral cortex.
