Reprogramming Stars #9:Spacing Out Cellular Reprogramming—An Interview with Dr. Valentina Fossati

Reprogramming Star: Dr. Valentina Fossati is a senior investigator at the New York Stem Cell Foundation Research Institute where she focuses on building human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-based models for studying progressive multiple sclerosis (MS) and other neurodegenerative diseases to investigate the role of glia in neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration. She has established protocols to generate human iPSCderived oligodendrocytes, astrocytes, microglia, and neuronal cell types and is developing organoids and coculture systems to study the crosstalk between neurons and glial cells.Her ultimate goal is to identify and target key glia-driven pathogenic mechanisms leading to neurodegeneration in progressive MS, Alzheimer’s disease, and other disorders of the central nervous system (CNS).