Birgitt Schuele , MD

Dr. Schuele’s team at The Parkinson's Institute is developing a new model of  “Parkinson’s disease in a petri-dish”. CIRM is supporting this novel research with several grants. The collaborators on this initiative are scientists from academia and industry.

Her team has created patient-derived stem cell lines and differentiated them into dopamine neurons. The goal is to utilize this new model to exploit disease mechanisms of PD, discover environmental toxins, and for innovative drug screening.

• Dr. Schuele earned her M.D. in 2001 from the Medical University Lübeck, Germany and received her doctoral degree (Dr. med.) in Molecular Neurophysiology from the Georg-August University, Göttingen Germany.
• During her neurological internship at the Medical University Lübeck, she worked with Dr. Christine Klein on genetic forms of parkinsonism.
• Dr. Schuele served as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Uta Francke, Genetics Department, Stanford University from 2003-2005.
• She received her board-certification in 2005 from the American Board of Medical Genetics as a Clinical Molecular Geneticist.
• She joined The Parkinson's Institute in October 2005.