Education

M.A. (2019)
Washington University in St. Louis (Biology and Biomedical Sciences)

B.A. (2009)
Vanderbilt (Biology)

Joshua N. Ho, M.A.

Technology Advisor

*Not Admitted to Any Jurisdiction

Practice Focus

Mr. Joshua Ho is a Technology Advisor of our law firm. He renders advices to matters related to biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, technology transfer, and IP protection strategy

Mr. Ho is versatile in the following technologies:

CRISPR-Cas9 Gene Editing (combining a CRISPR based activation system and a live cell cycle indicator to identify genes that may override cell cycle exit during neuronal conversion, developing a script pipeline to demultiplex, sort, and process DNA sequencing data to identify sgRNAs that may activate a gene capable of overriding miRNA-mediated arrest)
Drug Screening (performing drug discovery of bioavailable small molecules utilizing zebrafish as an in-vivo screening platform, incorporating a small molecule Dorsomorphin to direct differentiating embryonic stem cells towards a cardiomyocyte lineage to screen marketed drugs for off target effects on the cardiac system, developing a metric measuring blood vessel growth in developing zebrafish embryos to screen small molecules for specificity and inhibition of VEGF signaling for the potential development of antiangiogenic drugs)

Cellular Reprogramming (exploring the biology of various neurodegenerative disorders using a human neuron platform, converting human skin fibroblasts into cholinergic neurons, determining neuronal subtype identity, transducing brain-enriched microRNAs and region-specific transcription factors to convert human fibroblasts into neurons to generate human neuron-based models of neurodegenerative diseases)
Molecular Biology (applying techniques of quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR), RNA sequencing (RNAseq), confocal microscopy, and bioinformatics, analyzing expression patterns of pan-neuronal and neuron subtype markers to establish the subtype identity of neurons, utilizing R scripting to perform statistical analysis of RNAseq data to mine for known neuronal subtype markers and producing and utilizing lentiviruses)

Background

Mr. Ho has been an enthusiastic researcher in stem cell biology since his time as an undergraduate research assistant at Vanderbilt University, where he learned about directing embryonic stem cells to cardiomyocytes. He continued his passion in research at Washington University, where he studied how to convert human skin fibroblasts to brain cholinergic neurons.

Mr. Ho is expanding his horizon from basic biomedical research to patent protection, technology transfer, and global trends of life science products. In addition, he would like to apply his natural strength as a strong communicator to rendering complex scientific issues in simple terms that the public can understand and use. This plain language approach will be very helpful to Mr. Ho when he works with inventors or responds to patent examiners.

In his spare time, Mr. Ho loves to share with friends his self-taught skills in cooking: from beef Wellington to soup dumplings. Mr. Ho’s additional hobbies include traveling, photography and music.