Xianmin Zeng's Biography

Xianmin Zeng, Associate Professor, Buck Institute for Research on Aging

Dr. Zeng is a leading stem cell biologist with expertise in human embryonic stem cells (ESC) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC). One of her research focuses is to study neural development in human and to model neurodegenerative diseases, with a focus on Parkinson’s disease, using patient-specific and engineered isogenic lines. She has developed scalable processes of generating functional cells of the central nervous system and peripheral nervous system from ESC/iPSC for cell therapies and drug screening. Dr. Zeng received her PhD in Molecular Biology from the Technical University of Denmark in 2000 and had her postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2000-2005. She joined the faculty of the Buck Institute Research on Aging in 2005 where she builds the Institute’s Stem Cell Program. Dr. Zeng is a recipient of several major funding including a translational grant to develop clinically grade dopaminergic neurons from pluripotent stem cells for Parkinson’s disease from California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and an iPSC-based toxicity screen grant from the NIN. She is also the Founder of XCell Science Inc, a biotech company dedicated to providing reagents and services in neural space.