Lawrence W. Stanton Professor of Genome Institute of Singapore Visits GIBH

　　April 9^th, Lawrence W. Stanton, associate director of the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), an A*STAR institute, was awarded a distinguished visiting professorship of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Prof Stanton was one of the first recruitments to the GIS more than 11 years and was a key driver to turn the GIS into one of the most successful academic institutions in Asia. This April Prof Stanton visited the GIBH to take part in the Sino-German summer school “Regenerative Medicine - Advance in Tissue Engineering and Stem Cell Applications” as a keynote speaker. During his visit he met with the director general Duanqing Pei and principle investigators of GIBH and delivered a public lecture at Sun-Yat Sen University.

　 Prof Ralf Jauch of GIBH, who is a long-term collaborator and former colleague of Prof Stanton, hosted the visit. Prof Stanton could familiarize himself with latest scientific achievements of GIBH and got an overview about the core technology platforms and laboratories. He also interacted intensively with students and junior staff and provided inspiration and specific guidance on research projects.

At the summer school, Prof Stanton delivered a lecture entitled "Modeling neurological disease with patient-specific neuron s derived from iPS cells" and introduced the latest developments in using induced pluripotent cells (iPSCs) combined with electrophysiological techniques to establish disease models for Parkinson’s disease. His insights were met with great interest as the GIBH has an ongoing effort to identify drugs to combat Parkinson’s disease by phenotypic screening using patient derived iPS cells. Prof. Stanton is now exploring with the head of drug development pipeline (DDP) Micky Tortorella and Prof Miguel Esteban to join forces in this area. Prof. Stanton also visited the exhibition hall of the Guangzhou development district (GDD) as well as the GDD managed Biotech island. During this tour he interacted with representatives of the Sino-Singapore Guangzhou Knowledge City (SSGKC) to explore possibilities to further deepen exchanges between Guangzhou and Singapore in the life sciences.