Biography:Sergiu P. Pașca

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Sergiu P. Pașca

Sergiu P. Pașca (born January 30, 1982) is a Romanian-born physician and scientist at Stanford University in California, USA. Pașca is a faculty in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, a neuroscientist and stem cell biologist and currently a NYSCF Robertson Investigator. He is part of the Stanford Neurosciences Institute, Stanford Bio-X and a fellow of the ChEM-H Institute at Stanford.[1] Pașca was listed among New York Times Visionaries in Medicine and Sciences, and he is the recipient of the 2018 Vilcek Award for Creative Biomedical Promise from the Vlicek Foundation.

Early life and education

Pașca was born in Cluj-Napoca in the western part of Romania also known as Transylvania. He was raised in nearby Aiud during the last years of communism.[2] Pașca showed early on an interest in chemistry. He set up his first science lab at the age of 11, in the basement of his parents’ house.[3] In the final year of high school, he won a prize in the national chemistry Olympiad, earning a scholarship to attend the university of his choice in Romania. In 2001, Pașca enrolled in the medical school in Cluj-Napoca. As a medical student, he worked with Professor Maria Dronca to explore biochemical defects in autism spectrum disorders. At the same time, he studied electrophysiology at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt in Germany under Dr Danko Nikolic. After obtaining his M.D., Pașca went to Stanford University in early 2009 as a postdoctoral fellow with Professor Ricardo Dolmetsch. At Stanford, he developed methods to derive neurons from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) and used these neural cultures to identify cellular phenotypes associated with brain disorders, including Timothy syndrome and Dravet syndrome.[4][5][6][7]

Research

Pașca’s laboratory at Stanford University explores the biological mechanisms of brain disorders using cellular models of the human brain.[8] Pașca developed some of the early in-a-dish models of disease by deriving neurons from skin cells taken from patients with genetic forms of autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders.[9][10] These patient neurons helped uncover the cellular defects of genetic mutations and demonstrated the promise of this novel technology. In his laboratory, Pașca went further to develop a novel platform that allows to take iPSC from any individuals and engineer lab-grown self-assembling three-dimensional (3D) structures called brain region-specific spheroids or organoids.[11] This method was listed among the Key Advances in hiPSC Disease Modeling of the Last Decade by the journal Cell Stem Cell,[12] and Organoids were named Methods of the Year in 2017 by Nature Methods.[13] These 3D brain tissue resemble specific regions of the nervous system[14][15] and his laboratory has maintained these cultures for over 800 days in vitro to show maturation of cells, including astrocytes, into postnatal stages. His work on astrocytes was inspired by the late Stanford neurobiologist Ben Barres. Pașca has also demonstrated that brain-region specific organoids can be fused to form brain assembloids and employed this preparation to study the cross-talk between cells in the developing human brain and to mimic human brain circuits in a dish.[16] This work was listed among the Top Research Advances of 2017 by the National Institutes of Health.[17]

Honors

Pașca is the co-director of the CSHL Workshop on Autism Spectrum disorders. He is a New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) Roberston Stem Cell Investigator, the recipient of the Vilcek Award for Creative Biomedical Promise (jointly with Feng Zhang and Polina Anikeeva), the Sammy Kuo Award for Neurosciences, the MQ Fellow Award for Transforming Mental Health, the Baxter Faculty Award, the NARSAD Young and Independent Investigator Awards, the NIMH Director’s BRAINS Award and the Folch-Pi Award for Neurochemistry. In Romania, he was recognized as the Best Romanian student studying abroad.[18]

References

  1. ↑ "Sergiu P. Pașca's Profile | Stanford Profiles". Profiles.stanford.edu. https://profiles.stanford.edu/sergiu-pasca. Retrieved 2018-06-07. 
  2. ↑ "The Vilcek Foundation - Sergiu P. Pașca". http://www.vilcek.org/prizes/prize-recipients/2018/sergiu-p-pasca.html. Retrieved 7 June 2018. 
  3. ↑ "Rising Star: Sergiu Pașca, scientist at play | Spectrum | Autism Research News". 19 February 2015. https://spectrumnews.org/news/profiles/rising-star-sergiu-pasca-scientist-at-play/. Retrieved 7 June 2018. 
  4. ↑ Krey, Jocelyn F.; Pașca, Sergiu P.; Shcheglovitov, Aleksandr et al. (2013). "Timothy syndrome is associated with activity-dependent dendritic retraction in rodent and human neurons". Nature Neuroscience 16 (2): 201–209. doi:10.1038/nn.3307. ISSN 1546-1726. PMID 23313911. 
  5. ↑ Paşca, Sergiu P.; Portmann, Thomas; Voineagu, Irina et al. (27 November 2011). "Using iPSC-derived neurons to uncover cellular phenotypes associated with Timothy syndrome". Nature Medicine 17 (12): 1657–1662. doi:10.1038/nm.2576. ISSN 1546-170X. PMID 22120178. 
  6. ↑ Sun, Yishan; Paşca, Sergiu P; Portmann, Thomas et al. (26 July 2016). "A deleterious Nav1.1 mutation selectively impairs telencephalic inhibitory neurons derived from Dravet Syndrome patients" (in en). eLife 5. doi:10.7554/eLife.13073. ISSN 2050-084X. https://elifesciences.org/articles/13073. 
  7. ↑ Tian, Yuan; Voineagu, Irina; Paşca, Sergiu P. et al. (2014). "Alteration in basal and depolarization induced transcriptional network in iPSC derived neurons from Timothy syndrome". Genome Medicine 6 (10): 75. doi:10.1186/s13073-014-0075-5. ISSN 1756-994X. PMID 25360157. 
  8. ↑ "Pașca Lab @ Stanford University - Home". Pascalab.org. 2018-05-24. https://www.pascalab.org/. Retrieved 2018-06-07. 
  9. ↑ Paşca, Sergiu P.; Panagiotakos, Georgia; Dolmetsch, Ricardo E. (2014). "Generating human neurons in vitro and using them to understand neuropsychiatric disease". Annual Review of Neuroscience 37: 479–501. doi:10.1146/annurev-neuro-062012-170328. ISSN 1545-4126. PMID 25002278. 
  10. ↑ "The Vilcek Foundation - Sergiu P. Pașca". Vilcek.org. http://www.vilcek.org/prizes/prize-recipients/2018/sergiu-p-pasca.html. Retrieved 2018-06-07. 
  11. ↑ Pașca, Sergiu P. (2018). "The rise of three-dimensional human brain cultures". Nature 553 (7689): 437–445. doi:10.1038/nature25032. ISSN 1476-4687. PMID 29364288. 
  12. ↑ Passier, Robert; Orlova, Valeria; Mummery, Christine (March 2016). "Complex Tissue and Disease Modeling using hiPSCs". Cell Stem Cell 18 (3): 309–321. doi:10.1016/j.stem.2016.02.011. 
  13. ↑ "Method of the Year 2017: Organoids". Nature Methods: 1. 3 January 2018. doi:10.1038/nmeth.4575. 
  14. ↑ Paşca, Anca M.; Sloan, Steven A.; Clarke, Laura E. et al. (2015). "Functional cortical neurons and astrocytes from human pluripotent stem cells in 3D culture". Nature Methods 12 (7): 671–678. doi:10.1038/nmeth.3415. ISSN 1548-7105. PMID 26005811. 
  15. ↑ Sloan, Steven A.; Darmanis, Spyros; Huber, Nina et al. (16 August 2017). "Human Astrocyte Maturation Captured in 3D Cerebral Cortical Spheroids Derived from Pluripotent Stem Cells". Neuron 95 (4): 779–790.e6. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2017.07.035. ISSN 1097-4199. PMID 28817799. 
  16. ↑ Birey, Fikri; Andersen, Jimena; Makinson, Christopher D. et al. (2017). "Assembly of functionally integrated human forebrain spheroids". Nature 545 (7652): 54–59. doi:10.1038/nature22330. ISSN 1476-4687. PMID 28445465. 
  17. ↑ "2017 Research Highlights — Insights from the Lab" (in en). 15 December 2017. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/2017-research-highlights-insights-lab. Retrieved 7 June 2018. 
  18. ↑ "EXCLUSIV Sergiu Pașca, studentul român al anului 2012 din străinătate: „Ar fi trebuit să plec la studii mai devreme“" (in ro). http://adevarul.ro/educatie/studii-in-strainatate/exclusiv-sergiu-pasca-studentul-roman-anului-strainatate-ar-trebuit-plec-studii-mai-devreme-1_50f3122e56a0a6567e7b1fad/index.html. Retrieved 7 June 2018. 




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