- Phone : +1 (416) 978-4539
- Email : brenda.coles@utoronto.ca
- Address : 160 College Street, 11th floor Donnelly Centre
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About Derek van der Kooy
Derek van der Kooy received a M.Sc. in Psychology at the University of British Columbia, and a Ph.D in Anatomy, first at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, and finishing in the Department of Anatomy at the University of Toronto. Dr. van der Kooy gained postdoctoral research experience at Cambridge University in England and at the Salk Institute in California. In 1981, Derek became an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, was promoted to Associate Professor in 1986, then served as Professor in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Toronto from 1991- 2002, and has since become a Professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics.
The van der Kooy lab works on various stem cell biology and developmental biology research projects; specifically, stem cells in organisms from Drosophila to humans. With his lab, Derek van der Kooy produced the first report of stem cells in the adult mammalian eye, published in 2000 in Science. Further work, which was published in the journal, Neuron, 2001, documented how embryonic stem cells were shown to differentiate directly to neural stem cells through a default mechanism. Derek’s lab continues to investigate the nature of stem cells, embryonic and adult, the concept of immortal cells, and the differentiation of embryonic stem cells, capable of forming any tissue in the body, to neural stem cells. Outside of the van der Kooy lab, Derek is both a founding and planning committee member of the Ontario Stem Cell Initative (OSCI), the head of the Pancreas Program for Regenerative Medicine at the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine, serves on the project management committee for the Ontario Consortium for Regeneration inducing Therapeutics (OCRiT), and serves on numberous editorial boards and review committees.