Dr. Clive Svendsen received his PhD from the University of Cambridge in England. In 2000, he moved to the University of Wisconsin as Professor of Neurology and Anatomy and founded their Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center. In 2010, Dr. Svendsen moved to Los Angeles and founded the Cedars-Sinai Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute, which currently has over 30 faculty members. Dr. Svendsen maintains a large lab that focuses on using patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to model neurological diseases including Spinal Muscular Atrophy, Parkinson’s Disease and ALS. His lab also combines iPSCs and organ-chip technologies for enhanced multicellular models. The other focus of Dr. Svendsen’s lab involves cutting-edge clinical trials that use combinations of neural progenitor cells along with growth factors. He is the Sponsor for a current Phase 1/2a clinical trial delivering neural progenitor cells to the subretinal space as a treatment for Retinitis Pigmentosa. Additionally, he was the Sponsor for the first-ever clinical trial delivering neural progenitors engineered to release GDNF to the spinal cord of ALS patients, which met the trial endpoint of safety. He is also the Sponsor for an ongoing trial delivering these same cells to the motor cortex of ALS patients.