Neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD), Huntington's disease (HD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) affect millions of people every year and so far no therapeutic treatment is available. Although animal and histological models have been very helpful in understanding disease mechanisms and identifying possible therapeutic strategies, there is still a critical need for systems that can provide more predictive and physiologically relevant results to find disease preventive or therapeutic solutions. One possible pathway is the development of patient-derived models, e.g. a patient's own stem cells that can be programmed by directed differentiation in culture to become any cell type. These systems contain essential genetic information from donors and therefore have great potential in drug testing platforms, as well as pathological mechanisms underlying disease phenotype and progression. Stem cells from patients are widely cultured in 2D systems and used to model disease, but 3D models have recently been used as a more advanced alternative to mimic the complexity of the human brain. In particular, significant progress has been made in culturing stem cells using biomaterials. 3-D culture methods not only overcome the limitations associated with 2-D cell culture, but also have the maximum potential to determine the biological properties of cells (proliferation, differentiation, cell death, etc.) required for clinical research, pharmaceutical or biotechnology applications. In these fields, our country needs serious R&D, production and application studies.
For this purpose, Üsküdar University, cellular therapies and stem cell production, application and research center (ÜSKÖKMER) was established in the official gazette dated June 1, 2020 to carry out R&D studies aiming to treat other diseases, especially neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases that cannot be treated with routine treatment methods, using stem cells, to develop new application methods and to produce stem cells and other cellular products for this purpose. The ultimate goal of ÜSKÖKMER is to become a center that responds to the needs of not only Turkey but also Europe in the field of treatment with stem cells. In line with this goal, ÜSKÖKMER's basic R&D infrastructure (stem cell culture and proteomics laboratories) was established with the financial support of our university. In the following stages, projects have been initiated with national and international partners to establish a GMP infrastructure for the production of stem cells and cellular products for clinical applications, tissue engineering, development of drug delivery systems with stem cells, medical diagnosis (development of biosensors for early diagnosis of diseases, biomarker detection, etc.) and R&D, production and application infrastructure in the fields of personalized treatment.
Prof. Dr. Sevim IŞIK
ÜSKÖKMER Director