The overall goal of my lab is to work on optimizing a stem cell therapy to add onto the current in-utero surgical treatment of spina bifida. My lab primarily focusses on using human placental stem cells for our treatments. Starting out, I will be tasked with comparing exosome secretion between placental stem cells from different terms, as well as to bone marrow stem cells. This will allow us to determine if there is an optimal stage of development for harvesting placental stem cells, and to determine if placental cells have a greater neuroprotective effect than bone marrow stem cells. To do this, I will be using flow cytometry, ELISA and Proteome analysis, Western Blotting, and Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy. To assess for neuroprotective effect, cells will be examined both in-vitro and in-vivo in either an ovine or fetal ovine model.