Principal Investigator Feng Zhang
By applying these and other methods, Zhang hopes to generate new animal models of human disease in order to study their underlying biological mechanisms. He is especially interested in complex disorders, such as psychiatric and neurological diseases, that are caused by multiple genetic and environmental risk factors and which are difficult to model using conventional methods. Zhang’s method may also lead to new ways to produce brain stem cells, which could be used as a platform for developing new drugs and as a new source of material for transplantation in many human degenerative diseases.