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Samuel Weiss is a Canadian neurobiologist.
Weiss was an undergraduate at McGill University, where he received a B.Sc. in Biochemistry. He then went on to take his Ph.D. in Neurobiology at the University of Calgary. From 1983 to 1988 he held two postdoctoral fellowships funded by the AHFMR and the Medical Research Council of Canada, the first at the Centre de Pharmacologie-Endocologie, Montpellier, France, and the second at the University of Vermont College of Medicine.
In 1985 Dr. Weiss and Fritz Sladeczek discovered the metabotropic glutamate receptor, currently an extremely important area of research for neurological disorders. Dr. Weiss was appointed Assistant Professor and MRC Scholar at The University of Calgary in 1988. In 1992, while working at the University of Calgary, Dr. Weiss and graduate student Brent Reynolds found cells in the brains of mice that divided to produce new cells. They claimed that they successfully isolated stem cells and got them to divide and multiply in a lab dish. The success of this experiment suggested that stem cells could be coaxed into producing new cells to replace damaged or destroyed brain cells. Currently Dr. Weiss is a Professor in the Department of Cell Biology & Anatomy/Pharmacology & Therapeutics and a member of the Genes and Development Research Group Faculty of Medicine University of Calgary. He is also the director of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, sits on numerous national and international peer review committees, has authored many publications, holds key patents in the neural stem cell field and has founded two biotechnology companies. The second company, Stem Cell Therapeutics, is currently developing his discoveries for the treatment of various CNS disorders, including stroke.
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