LORENZ STUDER
Director and Founder, Center for Stem Cell Biology; Member, Developmental Biology Program, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Professor, Department of Neuroscience,
Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences 2015 MacArthur FellowJOHN D. & CATHERINE T. MACARTHUR FOUNDATIONAs a medical school student at the Universities of Fribourg and Bern in Switzerland in the late 1980s, Lorenz Studer had two inspiring mentors who were instrumental in switching him from a clinical track to one in laboratory research. Mario Wiesendanger, a neuroscience professor at the University of Fribourg, “showed me how to think about science and presented what was and was not known in neuroscience, which got me very interested in brain research,” says Studer. Because there was no university-based training hospital at Fribourg, Studer transferred to the University of Bern after he completed the first two years of medical courses. There, he met Christian Spenger, a neurosurgery fellow who introduced him to a then-novel type of therapy—cell transplantations into the brain—for Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. “He was not much older than me, and full of energy. He got me excited about cell therapies,” says Studer. “I learned from him that if you believe in an idea, that you can push it forward by your energy and finding the right people to support you. And to not be afraid to be risky or unconventional.” Spenger—and Hans-Rudolf Lüscher, the head of the physiology department, who became Studer’s official advisor—emboldened Studer to do a laboratory research–based thesis rather than the clinical case write-ups that most medical students completed.
“When you don’t get the results you want, you change strategy, make other things happen, and begin to understand basic principles.”
“There was no clear MD-PhD path, so it was a bit unusual for medical students to stay on and do research,” says Studer. After finishing medical school in 1991, Studer remained at the University of Bern for five more years and earned an unofficial PhD, working with Spenger on cell-based neurology therapy, initially in animals, then in humans.
Collaborating first in a tiny makeshift lab, Studer and Spenger worked up to the first Swiss clinical trials of a fetal cell–derived therapy for Parkinson’s disease in 1995. The human study inspired Studer to look for alternative cell sources to treat Parkinson’s. “Seeing how cumbersome the ...
