Affiliation: Institute for Stem cell Therapy and Exploration of Monogenic diseases (I-Stem)

Karim Ben M’Barek is a research scientist at I-Stem (Institute for Stem Cell Therapy and Exploration of Monogenic Diseases, France). He obtained his PhD in Neuroscience from Curie Institute / University Paris-Saclay (France) in 2012, where he studied the role of the protein responsible of Huntington’s disease during hippocampal neurogenesis and depressive symptoms. Then, he joined I-Stem first as a postdoc then as a research scientist to develop stem cell-based therapies for retinal degeneration. He was the first to demonstrate that the formulation of a RPE cell therapy product is crucial to achieve the best therapeutic effect in rodent. He also developed transplantation strategies in rodent as well as patented medical devices to prepare cell therapy products. The first clinical trial using human pluripotent stem cells for Retinitis Pigmentosa is based on this work. He is also expert in the differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells into retinal cells and in tissue engineering by design.