UCLA Neuroscience Program Ph.D. Admissions Neuroscience Faculty UCLA and Beyond  



Harley Kornblum
Growth Factors in Brain Development and Plasticity

Work Email Address:  harley@ucla.edu

Laboratory Address:
Crump 1246
Work Address:
Room 1126, Crump Institute
Phone Numbers:
(310) 794-7866

Selected Publications:

Geschwind DH, Ou J, Easterday M, Trerskikh A, Weissman I, Chen Z, Nelson S, Kornblum HI A genetic analysis of neural progenitor differentiation.. Neuron 2001; 29: 325-339.
Fox IJ, Paucar AA, Nakano I, Mottahedeh J, Dougherty JD, Kornblum HI Developmental expression of glial fibrillary acidic protein mRNA in mouse forebrain germinal zones--implications for stem cell biology.. Brain research. Developmental brain research. . 2004; 153(1): 121-5.
Nakano I, Hemmati HD, Kornblum HI [Cancer stem cells in pediatric brain tumors]. No shinkei geka. Neurological surgery. . 2004; 32(8): 827-34.
Tiwari-Woodruff SK, Kaplan R, Kornblum HI, Bronstein JM Developmental expression of OAP-1/Tspan-3, a member of the tetraspanin superfamily. J Neurosci Res. 2004; 77(2): 166-73.
Mir HM, Tatsukawa KJ, Carmichael ST, Chesselet MF, Kornblum HI Metabolic correlates of lesion-specific plasticity: an in vivo imaging study.. Brain research. . 2004; 1002(1-2): 28-34.
Easterday MC, Dougherty JD, Jackson RL, Ou J, Nakano I, Paucar AA, Roobini B, Dianati M, Irvin DK, Weissman IL, Terskikh AV, Geschwind DH, Kornblum HI Neural progenitor genes. Germinal zone expression and analysis of genetic overlap in stem cell populations.. Developmental biology. . 2003; 264(2): 309-22.
Hemmati HD, Nakano I, Lazareff JA, Masterman-Smith M, Geschwind DH, Bronner-Fraser M, Kornblum HI Cancerous stem cells can arise from pediatric brain tumors.. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. . 2003; 100(25): 15178-83.
Karsten SL, Kudo LC, Jackson R, Sabatti C, Kornblum HI, Geschwind DH Global analysis of gene expression in neural progenitors reveals specific cell-cycle, signaling, and metabolic networks.. Developmental biology. . 2003; 261(1): 165-82.
Fu L, Abu-Khalil A, Morrison RS, Geschwind DH, Kornblum HI Expression patterns of epidermal growth factor receptor and fibroblast growth factor receptor 1 mRNA in fetal human brain.. The Journal of comparative neurology. . 2003; 462(2): 265-73.
Groszer M, Erickson R, Scripture-Adams DD, Lesche R, Trumpp A, Zack JA, Kornblum HI, Liu X, Wu H Negative regulation of neural stem/progenitor cell proliferation by the Pten tumor suppressor gene in vivo.. Science. . 2001; 294(5549): 2186-9.
Kornblum HI, Araujo DM, Annala AJ, Tatsukawa KJ, Phelps ME, Cherry SR In vivo imaging of neuronal activation and plasticity in the rat brain by high resolution positron emission tomography (microPET).. Nature biotechnology. . 2000; 18(6): 655-60.
Research Interest:

As a Pediatric Neurologist, I am interested in basic research applicable to diseases of the developing nervous system. I am clinically active, and am involved in the UCLA Pediatric Epilepsy Surgery program. The work in my laboratory focuses on the role of neurotrophic factors in brain development and plasticity. We are particularly interested in the epidermal growth factor family of peptides, which have been shown to have neurotrophic activities in vitro. We are currently using in situ hybridization techniques to localize message for members of this family and their receptor in the developing and adult brain, and have demonstrated anatomically specific changes in the brain following hemidecortication, an experimental model of epilepsy surgery performed at UCLA. We are investigating the functional role of these molecules using primary cultures and knockout mice. We also use both animal models and human studies to investigate activity-dependent regulation of neurotrophic factors in the developing brain. This is pertinent to the study of seizures and the development of epilepsy. A variety of anatomical and neurochemical techniques are utilized to better define the systems that we are working in and to place our results in a neuroanatomical framework.