Ruslan Rust

I am currently working as a Group Leader at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine of the University of Zurich, Switzerland and focus on basic and translational research in vascular and neurobiology. I received my PhD at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland in 2019 defending the thesis entitled “Vascular Repair after Ischemia” supervised by Prof. Dr. M.E. Schwab. During the PhD, I became interested in translational stroke research and developing regenerative therapies in preclinical rodent models. From 2019, I joined the group of Prof. Dr. R.M. Nitsch and Dr. C. Tackenberg in the Institute for Regenerative Medicine (IREM) at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. In this project, I focused on developing next-generation stem cell-based therapies following stroke. I am currently member of the Society for Neuroscience (SFN) and European Society for Clinical Investigation (ESCI). I received several fellowships and awards including the selection as a Young Scientist for the 70th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting 2020 by the Lindau Nobel committee and a full doctoral fellowship by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation, Germany’s largest and most prestigious scholarship foundation. Our current research focuses on overcoming limitations in cell therapies following brain injury using state-of-the-art genetic, molecular, and computational tools. We have recently generated a scalable neural cell source from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) under xeno-free conditions that can be continuously tracked in vivo. These cells will be genetically engineered with a brain-shuttle system to facilitate systemic delivery across the brain barriers. To circumvent immune rejection, transplants will co-express distinct immunosuppressive molecules together with safety checkpoints. Efficacy of these advanced cell therapies will be evaluated through an experimental pipeline comprising i.a. in vivo imaging, deep learning-based behavioral profiling, and spatially resolved transcriptomics. The generated findings will be valuable to advance cell therapy for brain injury further towards clinical applications in the foreseeable future.