Marcel Daadi, Ph.D.

Dr. Marcel Daadi is an expert in regulated translational research, especially in stem cell therapeutic applications for Parkinson’s disease and brain injuries. He discovered growth and differentiation conditions to direct human neural stem cells toward the dopaminergic lineage. This work produced two hallmark studies, both of scientific importance and therapeutic application for Parkinson’s disease.

In an industrial setting (NeuroSpheres Ltd. and Layton Biosciences Inc.), he developed therapeutic neural stem cell lines for clinical use in stroke, Parkinson’s disease and other diseases and injuries. He is involved in the development of the world’s first cryopreserved neural product manufactured under current Good Manufacturing Practices and transplanted into patients afflicted with stroke at Layton Biosciences Inc., Sunnyvale CA.

At the University of California San Francisco, he was involved in pivotal Investigational New Drug-enabling gene therapy non-human primate studies that allowed Avigen, Inc. to conduct clinical trials for treating patients with Parkinson’s disease. At Stanford University, he started and led the human embryonic stem cell program focused on developing therapeutic stem cell lines for treating ischemic stroke. He also discovered and patented a novel technique of engineering neural cells from pluripotent human embryonic stem cells that is currently in development for treating patients with stroke.

Dr. Daadi's current and future research is centered on the following areas:

1. Development of technologies to establish pluripotent stem cells, isolate self-renewable multipotent NSCs and generate specific neuronal lineages, such as dopaminergic neurons for treating Parkinson’s disease.

2. Pursuing reprogramming and genome-editing technologies to model neurological disorders in vitro and to understand mechanisms mediating disease development and degenerative processes following injury or disease.

3. Developing therapeutic stem cell lines in our current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) facility at the Southwest National Primate Research Center.

4. Preclinical development using nonhuman primates models of a variety of diseases and applying cell delivery and multimodal molecular imaging techniques to monitor the safety and efficacy..

5. Genetica engineering of NSCs to investigate the role of optogenetics on their fate after grafting. These studies will help determine the mechanisms mediating stem cell graft–host interactions in enhancing neuro-regeneration and restoring function.

Results from our studies are the foundation of translational research aimed at repairing diseased or injured brain through transplantation of highly purified NSCs or stimulation of endogenous repair mechanisms.

• Publications

  Hong H., Daadi M.M. (2019). Generating Neural Stem Cells from iPSCs with Dopaminergic Neurons Reporter Gene. Methods Mol. Biol. 1919: 119-128.

  Kim J., Daadi M.M. (2019). Single-Cell Library Preparation of iPSC-derived Neural Stem Cells. Methods Mol. Biol. 1919: 129-143.

  Kim J., Daadi M.M. (2019). Bioinformatics Analysis of Single-Cell RNA-Seq Raw Data From iPSC-Derived Neural Stem Cells. Methods Mol. Biol. 1919: 145-159.

  Roy-Choudhury G., Daadi M.M. (2019). Assay for Assessing Mitochondrial Function In iPSC-Derived Neural Stem Cells and Dopaminergic Neurons. Methods Mol. Biol. 1919: 161-173.

  Yang G., Hong H., Torres A., Malloy K.E., Choudhury G.R., Kim J., Daadi M.M. (2019). Reference Transcriptome for Deriving Nonhuman Primate Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells. Methods Mol. Biol. 1919: 175-186.

  Hong H., Roy-Choudhury G., Kim J., Daadi M.M. (2019). Isolation and Differentiation of Self-Renewable Neural Stem Cells from Marmoset Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells. Methods Mol. Biol. 1919: 199-204.

  Choudhury G.R., Daadi M.M. (2018). Charting the onset of Parkinson-like motor and non-motor symptoms in nonhuman primate model of Parkinson's disease. PLoS One. 2018 Aug 23; 13(8):e0202770..

  Yang G., Hong H., Torres A., Malloy K.E., Choudhury G.R., Kim J., Daadi M.M. (2018) Standards for Deriving Nonhuman Primate-Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells, Neural Stem Cells and Dopaminergic Lineage. (2018). Int J Mol Sci. 2018 Sep 17; 19(9).

  Malloy K., Li J., Choudhury G., Torres A., Gupta S., Kantorak C., Goble T., Fox P., Clarke G., Daadi M.M.MRI Guided Delivery of Neural Stem Cells into the Basal Ganglia of Nonhuman Primates. STEM CELLS Translational Medicine. 2017, 6(3):877-885.

  McEntire CR, Choudhury GR, Torres A, Steinberg GK, Redmond DE Jr, Daadi M.M. Impaired Arm Function and Finger Dexterity in a Nonhuman Primate Model of Stroke: Motor and Cognitive Assessments. Stroke. 2016, 47(4):1109-16.

  Choudhury G., Kim J., Frost P.A., Bastarrachea R.A., Daadi M.M.(2016). Nonhuman Primate Model in Clinical Modeling of Diseases for Stem Cell Therapy. BRAIN CIRCULATION. 2016, 2(3):141-145

  Daadi M.M., Barberi T, Shi Q, Lanford RE. (2014) Nonhuman primate models in translational regenerative medicine.Stem Cells Dev. 23, Suppl 1:83-7.

  Daadi M.M.,Grueter B.A., MalenkaR.C., Redmond DE, Steinberg G.K. (2012) Dopaminergic Neurons from Midbrain-Specified Human Embryonic Stem Cell-Derived Neural Stem Cells Engrafted in a Monkey Model of Parkinson's Disease. PLoS ONE, 2012;7(7):e41120.

  Daadi M.M., Hu S., Klausner J.Q., Li Z., Sofilos M., Sun G., Wu J.C. and Steinberg G.K. (2013) Imaging Neural Stem Cell Graft-Induced Structural Repair in Stroke. Cell Transplantation, 2013;22(5):881-92.

  Daadi M.M. (2011) Novel paths towards neural cellular products for neurological disorders. Regenerative Medicine 6(6 Suppl):25-30.

  Daadi M.M. (2011) Engineering Therapeutic Neural Stem Cell Lines For Parkinson’s Disease. In Embryonic Stem Cells - Recent Advances in Pluripotent Stem Cell-Based Regenerative Medicine. (Craig Atwood, ed.) InTech Publisher, ISBN 978-953-307-198-5.

  Daadi M.M. (2010) The Common path: Tumor suppression in the generation of iPS cells and cancer stem cells. Regenerative Medicine 5:21-22.

  Martinez-Cerdeno V, Noctor SC, Espinosa A, Ariza J, Parker P, Orasji S, Daadi M.M, Bankiewicz K, Alvarez-Buylla A, Kriegstein AR (2010) Embryonic MGE precursor cells grafted into adult rat striatum integrate and ameliorate motor symptoms in 6-OHDA-lesioned rats. Cell Stem Cell 6:238-250

  Daadi M.M., Davis A., Arac A., Li Z., Maag A.L., Bhatnagar R., Guohua S., Wu J.C. and Steinberg G.K. (2010) Human neural stem cell grafts modify microglial response and enhance axonal sprouting in neonatal hypoxic-ischemic brain injury. Stroke 41:516-523.