In 2010, he moved to Los Angeles where he founded and is the director of the Cedars-Sinai Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute (RMI), with a focus to both model and treat human diseases using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) – adult cells reversed to a young stem cell state capable of making all tissue types.

Dr. Svendsen’s lab focuses on using patient-derived iPSCs to model various neurodegenerative diseases. Additionally, using “organ-on-chip” technology that combines stem cells and engineering, Dr. Svendsen is creating multicellular human systems for research and drug development. He has received many recognitions for this work, including a feature on the cover of National Geographic as “The Future of Medicine”. Finally, his lab and collaborators have sent stem cells up into space, to understand more about how microgravity helps stem cell growth.

The other focus of Dr. Svendsen’s lab involves cutting-edge clinical trials using stem cells and growth factors. He is the Sponsor for a new clinical trial using stem cells to treat the incurable eye disease Retinitis Pigmentosa. He is also the Sponsor of the first-ever clinical trial delivering a combined stem cell and GDNF treatment to the spinal cord of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients that was recently completed at Cedars-Sinai and he is the Sponsor on a ongoing trial delivering this treatment to the brain of ALS patients. Finally Dr. Svendsen’s lab is taking cells from old patients and making them into young blood cells, which he has shown can prevent cognitive and memory decline in mice. The plan is to ultimately use this process to treat Alzheimer’s and perhaps aging.