Bio: Dr. Guang Hu is a senior investigator in the Epigenetic and RNA Biology Laboratory at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences/National Institutes of Health (NIEHS/NIH) in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA. He is also the director of the Epigenomics and DNA Sequencing Core Facility at NIEHS. He received his PhD degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas in 2003, and completed his postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts. He joined NIEHS in 2009 and led the Stem Cell Biology Group. His lab studies molecular mechanisms that regulate stem cell maintenance and differentiation, with a focus on pluripotent stem cells. He also develops pluripotent stem cell-based in vitro systems for developmental toxicology and environmental health sciences.

Abstract: Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is the second-most common neurodegenerative disorder in the world. It is characterized by the loss of dopaminergic (DA) neurons in specific brain areas. Importantly, environmental factors, such as chemical exposures or lifestyle choices, significantly modify the risk of PD. To systematically screen and evaluate environmental chemicals for their impact on PD risks, we are developing an in vitro model based on human PSC to DA neuron differentiation. We have generated a dual knock-in fluorescence reporter human PSC line using Nestin: GFP as a marker for floor plate progenitors and TH: mScarlet for DA neurons. We have also established high-content imaging approaches to monitor the progress, efficiency, cell growth and viability during differentiation. With this system, we will perform screens on compounds that have been previously implicated in neural toxicity by the Tox21 consortium. We aim to first identify potential chemicals that interfere with DA neuron differentiation at various developmental windows and then further investigate their mechanism of toxicity using genetic and genomic approaches. We hope that our approach will illustrate the power of stem cell models in environmental health science studies.