Clifford Woolf

HSCI researchers use patient-derived motor neurons to screen for clinically relevant targets Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers led by Clifford Woolf, M.D., Ph.D., have developed a high-throughput platform for discovering drug targets to treat...

HSCI faculty member co-leads Harvard Medical School project As the opioid epidemic continues to devastate communities across the U.S., there is a critical public health need for new, safer and more effective medicines to treat pain. To address this need...

Clinical trial success based on stem cell models in the lab Summary A clinical trial, supported in part by the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI), has shown that the drug retigabine improves a characteristic of motor neurons that is impacted in...

Clifford Woolf wants to reboot drug discovery to find a new way to treat pain: effectively and responsibly. Woolf’s goal is to stop the opioid crisis by rejecting the conventional approach to drug discovery and developing painkillers that do not harm...

HSCI scientists identify a potential target for treating neuropathic pain Why do people with neuropathic pain feel pain from minor touches and other normally harmless stimuli? Setting out to answer this question, Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI)...

Turning skin cells into pain-sensing neurons Human noxious stimulus detecting sensory neurons produced by converting skin cells with a set of five genes to this new fate—enabling study of "pain"in a dish. (Credit: Elizabeth Buttermore, PhD) After more...

New culture system makes it possible to observe progression of plaques and tangles Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) scientists, in collaboration with Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers, have developed a three-dimensional laboratory culture...

Discovery will lead directly to clinical trials Harvard stem cell scientists have discovered that a recently approved medication for epilepsy may possibly be a meaningful treatment for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)—Lou Gehrig’s disease, a uniformly...