Tchieu Research Lab

The Tchieu Research Lab investigates how support cells in the brain (such as astrocytes and microglia) are impacted in neurological disorders.

Due to the inaccessibility of primary human tissue, the Tchieu Lab develops strategies to derive these support cells from human pluripotent stem cells. This work has shed light on the mechanisms behind the neurogenic-to-gliogenic switch in human neural stem cells and enables the rapid generation of astrocytes for the use in human disease modeling.

With the Center for Stem Cell & Organoid Medicine (CuSTOM), the Tchieu Lab focuses on using stem cell-derived glial cells and innovative brain organoids to engineer complex models to study early human neurodevelopment and apply this knowledge in understanding how neurological diseases manifest.