CMCB Life Sciences Seminar: MD PhD Steven Finkbeiner, Gladstone Institutes, San Francisco

Host: Cristina Castillo

Title: Unraveling neurodegenerative disease with stem cells, robotics and artificial intelligence

Abstract: Complexity is a major obstacle to understand biology and disease well enough to accurately predict how systems will behave or which interventions are likely to become effective treatments for patients. Efforts to simplify experimental systems to make them tractable to use in the laboratory may eliminate essential features, limiting the relevance of the results they produce. In this seminar, we will describe the development and application of new technologies designed to improve the predictive power of insights gleaned from preclinical models of disease, including patient derived stem cells, robotics and artificial intelligence.We will illustrate the ability of some of these tools to unravel complex cause-and-effect pathogenic mechanisms with illustrative examples involving their application. With tools and technologies better able to handle the complexity of human biology, it may become easier to study systems that retain more of their essential features so that the scientific community may more reliabiy and accurately predict which therapeutic targets and treatments will work in patients.