Sanbing Shen

Prof. Shen leads a research group working on animal model and human-induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) models of brain disorders at REMEDI, School of Medicine, University of Galway. Through collaboration with Irish clinicians his team has generated iPSCs from healthy controls, and around 50 patients with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD), Fragile X Syndrome (FXS), Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), and Long QT syndrome (LQTS), all of which are associated with specific genetic lesions.

His latest activity involves deriving iPSCs from patients with Epilepsy, differentiating into astrocytes, neurons and cardiomyocytes, and phenotype them to establish human disease models. They have discovered that ULK4 can be a rare risk factor for neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders. They are working on the Ulk4 hypomorph mouse model and discovered its role in neuritogenesis, neurogenesis, ciliogenesis and anxiety behaviour.