Our lab is interested in unraveling the mechanisms governing growth and differentiation in the developing nervous system. Our current focus is the identification of cell contact- as well as diffusible factor-mediated determinants of neural lineage specification.

We utilize human pluripotent stem cells (embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells) as the chief model system, complemented with primary neural cell cultures, tumor cell lines and transgenic mouse model systems. Important techniques include a number of cell and tissue culture-based assays, molecular and cell biology, flow cytometry and FACS, histological analysis and microscopy.

Please see also: http://pruszak.openwetware.org/

5 Selected Publications

Schlegelmilch K., Mohseni M., Kirak O., Pruszak J.,  Rodriguez JR., Zhou D., Kreger BT., Vasioukhin V., Avruch J., Brummelkamp TR., Camargo FD. (2011) Yap1 acts downstream of α-catenin to control epidermal proliferation. J Cell Sci., 144: 782-95.

Carette* JE*., Pruszak J.*, Varadarajan M., Blomen VA., Gokhale S., Camargo FD., Wernig M., Jaenisch R., Brummelkamp TR. (2010) Generation of iPSCs from cultured human malignant cells. Blood, 115: 4039-42.

Chung S., Leung A., Han BS., Chang MY., Moon JI., Kim CH., Hong S., Pruszak J., Isacson O., Kim KS. (2009) Wnt1-lmx1a forms a novel autoregulatory loop and controls midbrain dopaminergic differentiation synergistically with the SHH-FoxA2 pathway. Cell Stem Cell, 5: 646-58.

Pruszak J., Ludwig W., Blak A., Alavian K., Isacson O. (2009) CD15, CD24 and CD29 define a surface biomarker code for neural lineage differentiation of stem cells. Stem Cells, 27: 2928-40.

Wakimoto H., Kesari S., Farrell CJ., Curry WT., Zaupa C., Aghi M., Kuroda T., Stemmer-Rachamimov A., Shah K., Liu TC., Jeyaretna DS., Debasitis J., Pruszak J., Martuza RL., Rabkin SF. (2009) Human glioblastoma-derived cancer stem cells: establishment of invasive glioma models and treatment with oncolytic herpes simplex virus vectors. Cancer Research, 69: 3472-81.

Fellowships, Awards and Honours

2012            Editorial Board Memberships: PLoS ONE, Molecular and Cellular Therapies (and 2013)
2011            Group leader, Emmy Noether-Program of the DFG
2009            Morgan-Zinsser Fellowship, The Academy at Harvard Medical School
2009            AAAS/ Science Program for Excellence in Science
2009            Co-recipient, Cozzarelli Prize, National Academy of Sciences (for Wernig et al., 2008)
2009            Excellence in Tutoring Award, Harvard Medical School (and 2010)
2007            Grave Scholarship, Shifman Endowed Scholarship, Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL)
2007            Nominee, Harvard Medical School Faculty Prize for Excellence in Teaching

• Flow cytometry, neural cell surface antigens
• Hippo/YAP signaling