Tesar Lab Mission Statement
The Tesar Lab scientific mission is to foster a community of research and development that will ultimately create new tools and medicines to improve the greater good of humanity. Visit the Tesar lab website.
About Paul:
Paul Tesar, a native of Cleveland, Ohio, holds a biology degree from Case Western Reserve University and earned a DPhil (PhD) from the University of Oxford on a National Institutes of Health scholarship.
During his graduate studies, under the guidance of Professor Sir Richard Gardner and Dr. Ron McKay, Paul's research led to the discovery of epiblast stem cells, published in Nature. This work earned him accolades, including the Beddington Medal and the Harold M. Weintraub Award. Paul joined the CWRU School of Medicine faculty in 2010 as a Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation Scholar. He currently holds the Dr. Donald and Ruth Weber Goodman Professorship in Innovative Therapeutics within the Department of Genetics and Genome Sciences, where his laboratory focuses on regenerative therapies for neurological disorders.
Paul's career highlights include recognition as a Robertson Investigator of the New York Stem Cell Foundation, the International Society for Stem Cell Research Outstanding Young Investigator Award, the New York Stem Foundation – Robertson Stem Cell Prize, and the Diekhoff Award for Graduate Student Mentoring. He has also been named one of Crain's Cleveland Business' "Forty Under 40" and recognized as a "HomeGrown Hero" in Academic Research by Cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer. Additionally, Paul co-founded Convelo Therapeutics, a biotechnology company now partnered with Genentech, dedicated to translating laboratory discoveries into clinical therapies to benefit patients.
My research focuses on stem cell pluripotency and differentiation, developmental neurobiology and genetics, regulation of glia, and therapeutic discovery.
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Our laboratory sits at the interface between stem cell biology and developmental neuroscience. We use pluripotent stem cells to model neurological development and disease with a specific focus on glial cells in the central nervous system – oligodendrocytes and astrocytes. We are interested in the molecular mechanisms by which cells acquire glial fate and function during development and maintain their functionality throughout life. We leverage this knowledge to define the cellular and molecular dysfunction that underlies certain neurological diseases and strive to develop meaningful therapeutic interventions using high throughput chemical screening and other approaches.