Biochemical Journal Poster Prize winner

Ole Wiskow

Ole Wiskow is a final PhD student in the lab of Prof Austin Smith at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell Research at the University of Cambridge. He obtained both his B.Sc. and M.Sc. from the Technical University Munich where he worked on the isolation and characterization of porcine mesenchymal stem cells.

The focus of his PhD is the establishment of novel in vitro neural differentiation systems, both from human and mouse stem cells. His particular focus is on EpiSCs (epiblast-derived stem cells), which are derived from a later developmental stage of the mouse embryo than ES (embryonic stem) cells. EpiSCs rely just like hES (human ES) cells on FGF (fibroblast growth factor) and activin for self-renewal. In contrast with hES cells, EpiSCs are relatively easy to manipulate in culture, thus the analysis of the neural differentiation potential of EpiSCs could potentially lead to new insights in the self-renewal and neural differentiation signalling pathways of hES cells.