Dr. Kriegstein received BA from Yale University and his MD and PhD degrees from New York University in 1977 where his thesis advisor was Dr. Eric Kandel. He subsequently completed 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. In 2004 he joined the Neurology Department at the University of California, San Francisco. He is currently the John Bowes Distinguished Professor in Stem Cell and Tissue Biology and Founding Director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCSF. Dr. Kriegstein’s own research focuses on the way in which neural stem and progenitor cells in the embryonic brain produce neurons, and ways in which this information can be used for cell based therapies to treat diseases of the nervous system. His lab 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.

Title: Genomic Insights into Early Human Brain Development, Evolution, and Disease

Abstract:

The human cerebral cortex is more than three times expanded compared to our closest non-human primate relatives. The cortex emerges from an initially pseudostratified neuroepithelium that gives rise to radial glia, the neural stem cells of the cortex. A number of subtypes of radial glia have been identified, and single cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq) has contributed to a novel model of primate corticogenesis, highlighted human-specific features of cortical development, suggested a relationship between oRG cells and brain tumors, and provided a benchmark for in vitro organoid models of brain development and disease. Recently, we conducted paired RNA sequencing and ATAC-seq on single nuclei derived from multiple regions and age groups of the developing human neocortex. In addition, spatial transcriptomic analysis was utilized to reveal cellular niches and cell-cell communication. These datasets have enabled the construction of a multi-omic atlas of the human neocortex across different developmental stages at single-cell resolution. The results illuminate molecular and cellular dynamics of the developing human neocortex, including cellular composition, spatial organization, intercellular signaling, gene regulatory networks, lineage potential, and disease susceptibility, highlighting novel progenitor cell lineages and shedding light on mechanisms of glioblastoma and neuropsychiatric disorders.