March 1, 2005 – The CDB is pleased to announce that Toru Kondo has been appointed to head the Laboratory for Cell Lineage Modulation, beginning in April 2005. The new laboratory will study the molecular mechanisms of dedifferentiation and transdifferentiation.

Dr. Kondo is interested in understanding how extracellular signals regulate epigenetic modification and chromatin remodeling, and how these can influence cell fates. His research will focus on the molecular mechanism of the reversion of oligodendrocyte precursor cells to neural stem-like cells and he hopes one day the knowledge gained from this work will contribute to the development of therapeutic applications. He is also interested in the stem-like cells in brain tumors, which he plans to characterize, investigate their origins, and possibly develop new methods for brain tumor therapy. Dr. Kondo joins the CDB from the Centre for Brain Repair at University of Cambridge.

His recent publications include:

Kondo and Raff, Genes Dev. 18: 2963-2972 (2004)

Setoguchi, and Kondo, J. Cell Biol.166: 963-968 (2004)

Kondo and Raff, Dev. Biol. 267: 242-251 (2004)

Kondo et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA101: 781-786 (2004)

Kondo and Raff, Science 289: 1754-1757 (2000)

Kondo and Raff, Development 127: 2989-2998 (2000)