Lachlan Thompson
BSc(Hons) PhD
Senior Research Officer
Brain Injury and Repair
Neurodegeneration Laboratory
Contact Details:
Email: | |
Phone: | +61 (0)3 8344 7486 |
Fax: | +61 (0)3 9347 1707 |
Research Interests
- Cell replacement therapy for brain repair (special focus on Parkinson’s disease).
- Connectivity of neural grafts.
- Development of the midbrain dopamine system.
- Stem cell biology.
- Neuropathology of Parkinson’s disease.
Laboratory Techniques
- Sterotaxic surgery.
- Foetal tissue dissection.
- Neural grafting.
- Flow cytometery/FACS.
- Behavioural analysis.
- Immunohistochemistry.
- In situ hybridisation histochemistry.
- Confocal microscopy.
Projects currently available
1. Re-building the nigro-striatal pathway in the Parkinsonian brain.
2. Stem cell therapy for Parkinson’s disease.
(for detailed descriptions please refer to the Neuroparkville website: www.neuroparkville.org.au)
Additional Information
- 1. The embryonic brain of the Ngn2-GFP reporter mouse. GFP expression (green) highlights areas of the brain where certain classes of neurons develop under control of the gene Neurogenin2.
- 2. The developing midbrain at the time dopamine neurons are born. Immature progenitors initially express Nurr1 (red) and then also tyrosine hydroxylase (blue) as they become more differentiated. This image is from a mouse engineered such that the tyrosine hydroxylase neurons also express green fluorescent protein (green).
- 3. Mature midbrain dopamine neurons in a graft of ventral mesencephalon placed in the striatum of the parkinsonian rat brain. The neurons are from a transgenic mouse engineered such that all dopamine neurons express green fluorescent protein. This allows us to study graft-derived patterns of connectivity in the host brain.
Publications & Articles
Thompson LH, Kirik D, Bjorklund A. Non-dopaminergic neurons in ventral mesencephalic transplants make widespread axonal connections in the host brain. Exp Neurol. 2008 (In press).
Irvin DK, Kirik D, Bjorklund A, Thompson LH. In vivo gene delivery to proliferating cells in the striatum generated in response to a 6-hydroxydopamine lesion of the nigro-striatal dopamine pathway. Neurobiol Dis. 2008 Jun;30(3):343-52.
Thompson L*, Andersson E*, Jensen J, Barraud P, Guillemot F, Parmar M, Bjorklund A. Neurogenin2 identifies a transplantable dopamine neuron precursor in the developing ventral mesencephalon. Exp Neurol. 2006 Mar;198(1):183-98.
Thompson L*, Barraud P*, Kirik D, Bjorklund A, Parmar M.
In vitro and in vivo properties of Sox1-GFP cells isolated from foetal brain, adult brain or expanded neurosphere culture. Eur J Neurosci. 2005 Oct;22(7):1555-69.
Thompson L, Barraud P, Andersson E, Kirik D, Bjorklund A.
Identification of dopaminergic neurons of nigral and VTA subtypes in grafts of foetal ventral mesencephalon based on cell morphology, protein expression and efferent projections. J Neurosci. 2005 Jul 6;25(27):6467-77.
Toft Sørensen A, Thompson L, Kirik D, Björklund A, Lindvall O, Kokaia M.
Functional properties and synaptic integration of genetically labeled dopaminergic neurons in intrastriatal grafts. Eur J Neurosci. 2005 May;21(10):2793-9.
Navarro-Galve B, Villa A, Bueno C, Thompson L, Johansen J, Martinez-Serrano A.
Gene marking of human neural stem/precursor cells using green fluorescent proteins. J Gene Med. 2005 Jan; 7(1): 18-29.
Jakobsson J, Rosenqvist N, Thompson L, Barraud P, Lundberg C.
Dynamics of transgene expression in a neural stem cell line transduced with lentiviral vectors incorporating the cHS4 insulator. Exp Cell Res. 2004 Aug 15; 298(2): 611-23.
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