Mohammed Shaker

Dr. Shaker is an accomplished neuroscientist who earned his PhD in 2017 from Korea University in Seoul, South Korea. His doctoral research focused on the cellular behavior of embryonic neural stem cells during brain and spinal cord development, as well as axial elongation. Dr. Shaker was awarded the prestigious Brain Korea 21 Plus Fellowship from Korea University Medical School, which set the stage for his subsequent role at AIBN-UQ. There, he joined Professor Ernst Wolvetang's laboratory as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Organoid Biology, continuing his pioneering research into the human central nervous system in health and disease using cutting-edge organoid technology.

Dr. Shaker has made several groundbreaking contributions to the field, including:

1. Generation of White Matter-like Tissues in Organoids: Dr. Shaker developed a robust and rapid protocol that produces white matter-like tissues enriched with myelinating oligodendrocytes, neurons, and astrocytes within 42 days. This protocol, detailed in publications such as Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience (2021) and STAR PROTOCOLS (2023), involves the exposure of neuroectoderm-derived organoids to a cocktail of growth factors and small molecules that promote oligodendrocyte specification and survival. His work also led to the discovery of NELL2 expression in human oligodendroglial cell types and its linkage to human white matter development and diseases, as highlighted in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology (2022).

2. Human Cortical Organoid Senescence: Dr. Shaker demonstrated that human cortical organoids exhibit typical hallmarks of senescent cells when maintained in vitro for extended periods. He also found that moderate upregulation of endogenous KL expression in cortical organoids inhibits neuronal senescence, providing new mechanistic insights into human brain aging. This significant finding was published in NPJ Aging and Mechanisms of Disease (2021).

3. Down Syndrome Modelling with Organoids: Dr. Shaker successfully modeled Down Syndrome using patient and isogenic human iPSCs lines with Choroid Plexus-Ventricle-Cortical organoids. This model, published in Science Advances (2024), is instrumental for dissecting the role of the choroid plexus in euploid and Down Syndrome forebrain development and enables screening for therapeutics to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 induced neuro-pathogenesis.

Currently, Dr. Shaker is leading two major research projects:

1. Leukodystrophy Modeling: Using reprogrammed patient iPSCs lines to create oligodendrocyte brain organoids, Dr. Shaker is advancing the understanding and potential treatments for leukodystrophies.

2. Neural Tube Elongation Defects: This project uses spinal cord organoids combined with advanced transcriptomics techniques to study the cellular processes driving neural tube elongation. The goal is to gain insights into the causes of neural tube defects, improving our understanding of how cells arrange into a continuously elongating neural tube.

Dr. Shaker’s innovative work continues to push the boundaries of neuroscience, providing valuable insights into the development and diseases of the human central nervous system