Jan A. Nolta, Ph.D., is the Director of the Stem Cell
Program at UC Davis School of Medicine, and directs
the new Institute for Regenerative Cures, a facility
supported by the California Institute for Regenerative
Medicine (CIRM). Dr. Nolta joined UC Davis in 2006
after serving for five years as scientific director of the
cell processing and gene therapy Good Manufacturing
Practice (GMP) facility at Washington University
School of Medicine in St. Louis. Her laboratory uses
human stem and progenitor populations to examine
their recruitment to areas of tissue damage in immune
deficient mice. Her research is focused on developing
improved stem cell therapies for treating neurodegenerative diseases including
Huntington’s and Parkinson’s diseases and ALS, Liver disease, lysosomal storage
diseases, and peripheral vascular disease. Her group focuses on “bench to the bedside”
research, and she has been involved in numerous clinical trials of gene and cell therapy.
Her early research experience focused on biology, cell cycle, transduction, and
engraftment of human hematopoietic and mesenchymal stem and progenitor cells in
immune deficient mouse xenotransplantation models. Dr. Nolta received a Bachelor’s
degree from California State University Sacramento, took Masters classes at UC Davis,
and then earned a Ph.D. in molecular microbiology from the University of Southern
California. She was a post-doctoral fellow with Donald Kohn at Children’s Hospital of
Los Angeles, and with Dr. Kohn’s team, performed the first trials of umbilical cord blood
gene therapy for ADA deficiency in neonates born with “bubble baby disease”. She was
an assistant professor at the USC School of Medicine before being appointed as an
associate professor at Washington University School of Medicine. She has published over
100 manuscripts in the stem cell field and has authored 15 book chapters and numerous
invited papers. She was editor of the Book "Genetic Engineering of Mesenchymal Stem
Cells", published in 2006.
A scientist with more than 20 years’ experience with human stem cells, Nolta has served
on more than 75 National Institutes of Health review panels and has been editor and
editorial board member on eight scientific journals, in addition to being active in
numerous scientific organizations. She is currently Associate Editor for the prestigious
journal "Stem Cells". She has often been a keynote lecturer at National and International
conferences, and participates in numerous training programs and community lectures, in
addition to didactic teaching and lecturing at UC Davis and other Universities.
Dr. Nolta is a native of northern California and is extremely happy to be back in the area,
after 15 years in Los Angeles and five years in St. Louis. In addition to her basic research
into the biology of human stem cells, she is overseeing the expansion of UC Davis’
exploration of regenerative medicine, including the recruitment and hiring of additional
scientists to complement the 130 faculty already affiliated with the Stem Cell Program.
These basic, translational, and clinical faculty are working in 15 different Disease Teams,
each with the goal of using stem cells to better treat or understand disease and tissue
injury. There are strong interactions and synergies through the stem cell program between
doctors who treat human patients and those who treat canine and equine patients. Dr.
Nolta is also overseeing the renovation of the 100,000 square-foot Institute for
Regenerative Cures on the UCD Sacramento Health Sciences/Medical School campus.
She anticipates that with the existing stem cell expertise at UC Davis, coupled with the
new research faculty members, trainees, and facilities in Sacramento, translational stem
cell science at the university will rise to new levels and offer great hope for those who
suffer from disease and debilitating injury.
Huntington’s disease team at UC Davis
PI Dr. Vicki Wheelock is Director of the HDSA Center of Excellence at UC Davis and,
with nurse practitioner Terry Tempkin, follows over 200 families with HD and 300 with
PD in the UCD Movement Disorders clinic. Half of the clinic's HD patients are enrolled
in clinical trials and Dr. Wheelock has extensive experience in this area. Dr. Wheelock is
extremely motivated to help the scientists model the disease as there are no curative
therapies for her HD patients. Dr. Nolta has had many years of experience cotransplanting transduced human MSC with other cells to study Good Laboratory Practice
- level safety and efficacy to facilitate translation to clinical trials. She has conducted
numerous human cell and gene therapy trials. Dr. Nolta did not work on HD or MSC
delivery to the brain until she was recruited back to UC Davis and met Dr. Wheelock and
the amazing community of HD patients and advocates throughout Northern CA. Due to
the huge impact that this community has had upon Dr. Nolta and her lab members,
developing cellular therapies for HD is now the focus of over half of the Nolta lab. The
Nolta laboratory and Dr. Wheelock’s clinic are integral parts of the large community of
HD researchers, physicians, patients and families throughout Northern California.
This team is conducting safety and efficacy studies to support a phase 1 clinical trial of
normal donor mesenchymal stem cell infusion into the striata to induce neurite outgrowth
and synaptic reconnection from neurons damaged by effects from the mutant huntingtin
protein. Dr. Nolta has used MSC over the past 21 years to safely and effectively deliver
many molecules in vivo to multiple organs, including the brain, in a robust and sustained
manner. Working with our Tech Transfer team at UC Davis, Drs. Nolta and Olson have
patented a unique approach to treating HD and other neurodegenerative disorders. They
will continue safety and efficacy testing in their unique strain of immune deficient HD
mice, and will also perform intracranial safety testing in the fetal primate model at UC
Davis, with Dr. Nolta’s close collaborator Dr. Alice Tarantal. Dr. Tarantal has an
established state-of-the-art imaging and fetal therapy program at the Primate Center
which includes the NHLBI Center for Fetal Monkey Gene Transfer for Heart, Lung, and
Blood Diseases and the NIH Center of Excellence in Translational Human Stem Cell
Research. This program is unequalled at any other nonhuman primate facility. Safety
validations in primates have already been initiated for the proposed studies. This is an
extremely committed team of researchers who meet weekly with collaborators, students,
and HD patient advocates.