derek van der kooy is professor in the department of medical genetics and microbiology at the university of toronto he received a masters degree in psychology at the university of british columbia and a phd in anatomy from erasmus university in 1978 as well as in the department of anatomy at the university of toronto in 1980 van der kooy gained postdoctoral research experience at cambridge university and at the salk institute in californiain 1981 he became an assistant professor was promoted to associate professor in 1986 and has served as professor in the department of anatomy and cell biology at the university of toronto from 1991 until 2002 when he became a professor in the department of medical genetics and microbiology his lab is the neurobiology research grouphis lab in the terrence donnelly centre for cellular and biomolecular research carries out various neuroscience and developmental biology research projects in 1994 his paper on neural stem cells in the adult mammalian forebrain was published in the journal neuron this work first established that adult mammalian neural stem cells were located in the subependyma of the forebrain lateral ventricle where two types of lineage related precursor cells progenitor cells and stem cells were shown to be present proliferation of these cell types were characterized in further experiments that were reported in articles in development and the journal of neuroscience of note dereks lab produced the first report of stem cells in the adult mammalian eye published in 2000 in science further work which was published in the journal neuron 2001 documented how embryonic stem cells were shown to differentiate directly to neural stem cells through a default mechanism dereks lab continues to investigate the nature of stem cells embryonic and adult the concept of immortal cells and the differentiation of embryonic stem cells capable of forming any tissue in the body to neural stem cellsa report published in science by dr derek van der kooys research group demonstrated that bdnf when infused into the ventral tegmental area vta can induce an opiatedependentlike reward state in animals in the absence of opiate administrationprevious studies have demonstrated that the opiate reward is mediated by a dopamineindependent reward system in nondependent animals and by a dopaminedependent reward system in dependent animals in the present study infusions of bdnf into the vta were able to shift opiate reward from a dopamineindependent system to a dopaminedependent system this switch is mediated through a specific change in gabaa receptors in the vta from inhibitory to excitatory signaling in response to increased bdnfthis work suggests that bdnf may play a critical role in mediating the shift to a drugdependent motivational state a crucial step in the pathogenesis of drug addictionbased on his experiments with human cadaveric pancreata van der kooy holds the controversial view that there exists an adult stem cell in the pancreas