Aaron Cheung – PhD Student, 2007-2013

Aaron Cheung completed his B.Sc. at the University of Toronto. His project involved the generation of induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells from Rett syndrome patients. These patient-iPS cells served as a source for patient specific neurons which were then phenotyped for disease-associated phenotypes.

Before completion of his PhD, Cheung had hoped to have had lunch at every restaurant in Toronto and collected the autographs of as many stem cell researchers as possible.

Funded by NSERC Graduate Scholarship.

Selected Publications

Chuen AY, Horvath LM, Carrel L, Ellis J. (2012) X-chromosome inactivation in rett syndrome human induced pluripotent stem cells. Frontiers in Psychiatry. 3:24.

Cheung AY, Horvath LM, Grafodatskaya D, Pasceri P, Weksberg R, Hotta A, Carrel L, Ellis J. (2011) Isolation of MECP2-null Rett Syndrome patient hiPS cells and isogenic controls through X-chromosome inactivation. Human Molecular Genetics.  20(11):2103-15.

Hotta A, Cheung AY, Farra N, Garcha K, Chang WY, Pasceri P, Stanford WL, Ellis J. (2009) EOS lentiviral vector selection system for human induced pluripotent stem cells. Nature Protocols. 4(12):1828-1844.

Rastegar M, Hotta A, Pasceri P, Makarem M, Cheung AY, Elliott S, Park KJ, Adachi M, Jones FS, Clarke ID, Dirks P, Ellis J. (2009) MECP2 Isoform-specific vectors with regulated expression for Rett syndrome gene therapy. PLoS ONE. 4(8):e6810.

Hotta A, Cheung AY, Farra N, Vijayaragavan K, Séguin CA, Draper JS, Pasceri P, Maksakova IA, Mager DL, Rossant J, Bhatia M, Ellis J. (2009) Isolation of human iPS cells using EOS lentiviral vectors to select for pluripotency. Nature Methods. 6(5):370–376.