Gist Croft, PhD
Senior Research Investigator, Parkinson's Disease
PhD, Columbia University
Bio
Dr. Croft leads NYSCF’s Parkinson’s and neurodegeneration program. Dr. Croft is an expert in using stem cells to understand human neurodevelopment and neurodegenerative disease as well as in microscopy and imaging. He joined NYSCF in 2018.
Dr. Croft received his PhD in neurobiology and behavior from Columbia University, where he helped develop the first human stem cell models of ALS. In his postdoctoral work at The Rockefeller University, he defined a new system to study early human embryology and led a team which used stem cells to uncover a previously unknown way in which Huntington’s disease affects neurodevelopment.
At NYSCF, Dr. Croft works with stem cells to recreate Parkinson’s disease in a dish and study the behavior and interactions of various brain cell types affected in the disease, with a focus on the role of glia cells (understudied ‘helper cells’ in the brain) and neuroinflammation.