Leyan Xu | Editor
Affilation: The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, USA
Dr. Leyan Xu, faculty member in the Department of Pathology, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, received his M.D. degree from Norman Bethune University of Medical Sciences (Now Jilin University) in 1994 and Ph. D. degree (Major in Medical Image and Nuclear Medicine) in Peking Union Medical College Hospital (PUMCH) in Peking Union Medical College in 2000. He started research in the biomedicine field in 1994 as a graduate student. Dr.Xu has conducted research on various projects in academia in China (1994-2001), University of Maryland (2001-2003) and The Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in USA (2003-Present). Dr. Xu’s expertise is in neuroscience including neurodegenerative diseases, stroke, traumatic brain injury, stroke and schizophrenia. Dr. Xu’s contributions and outstanding work are highly recognized and adopted by the independent researchers and experts in his field. He has made progress in stem cell therapy on motor neuron diseases (ALS). His research achievement became the principal foundation upon motor neuron disease clinical human trials for ALS which was approved by FDA. In addition, Dr. Xu managed pre-clinical trial on ALS therapy with umbilical cord blood hematopoietic stem cells sponsored by Johnson & Johnson. Based on the progress, He was invited to be Scientific Advisory Board Member on Cell-based Therapy in ALS, Johnson & Johnson, 2011. Dr. Xu has received an American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) Travel Scholarship award and an American Society for Neural Therapy and Repair (ASNTR) Travel Award.
Research Interest
My main research interest is cell therapy on degenerative and traumatic diseases of the nervous system. We have worked on several adult neural stem cell lines for the therapeutic aims in animal models of ALS, spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury. We also investigated the fate of neural stem cells derived from embryonic stem cells in vivo and in vitro under various environments. Recently, we focus on two researches: 1) cell therapy on traumatic brain injury by using embryonic stem cells derived neuronal precursors and oligodendrocyte precursors on animal model of diffuse axonal injury, 2) mechanism of traumatic brain injury involving repetitive closed head injury (tauopathy) and blast injury (neuroinflammation).














