Dr. Jackie Damen is a currently a Principal Scientist in Scientific Support for Hematology at STEMCELL Technologies, and was previously the Director of Contract Assay Services. She talks about the company's culture and growth, and how in her role, she teaches scientists and helps them conduct their experiments. She also discusses systems for drug screening and discovery, opportunities in industry, and her affinity for microscopy and photography.
Aug 09, 2022•1 hr 17 min
Dr. Marian Hettiaratchi is an Assistant Professor at the Knight Campus at the University of Oregon. Her research focuses on affinity-based biomaterials to promote tissue and bone repair. She talks about the delivery vehicles for these biomaterials, and her recent work on heparin-mediated delivery of BMP-2 to promote bone regeneration.
Jul 26, 2022•1 hr 7 min
Dr. Lydia Finley is an Assistant Member of the Cell Biology Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The Finley lab investigates how cellular metabolic pathways regulate cell fate decisions in stem cells and cancer cells. She talks about the metabolic profiles and needs of different cell types, her lab's discovery of an alternate TCA cycle, and how track and field led her to pursue metabolism research.
Jul 12, 2022•1 hr 15 min
In June 2022, we attended the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) annual meeting in San Francisco. We spoke with delegates to get their impressions of the meeting. They discussed the most memorable research presented and shared their thoughts on the challenges facing the stem cell field.
Jun 28, 2022•50 min
In June 2022, we attended the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) annual meeting in San Francisco, and recorded daily episodes discussing highlights of the previous 24 hours. Here is the final of four special episodes from the meeting.
Jun 19, 2022•39 min
In June 2022, we attended the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) annual meeting in San Francisco, and recorded daily episodes discussing highlights of the previous 24 hours. Here is the third of four special episodes from the meeting.
Jun 18, 2022•28 min
In June 2022, we attended the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) annual meeting in San Francisco, and recorded daily episodes discussing highlights of the previous 24 hours. Here is the second of four special episodes from the meeting.
Jun 17, 2022•27 min
In June 2022, we attended the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) annual meeting in San Francisco, and recorded daily episodes discussing highlights of the previous 24 hours. Here is the first of four special episodes from the meeting.
Jun 16, 2022•38 min
Dr. Michael Levin is the Director of the Allen Discovery Center and a Distinguished Professor of Biology at Tufts University. He is a cognitive biologist who utilizes model systems such as Xenopus to answer fundamental questions in developmental biology. He talks about regenerating frog legs, using bioelectricity to direct development, and the potential applications of xenobots.
Jun 14, 2022•1 hr 17 min
Dr. Steven Stice is the DW Brooks Distinguished Professor and Director of the Regenerative Bioscience Center at the University of Georgia, and the Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of ArunA Biomedical. He talks about his early work cloning rabbits and reprogramming blastomeres. He also discusses using exosomes to treat neurological diseases, helping trainees move into industry, and preserving endangered species.
May 31, 2022•1 hr 9 min
Dr. Amritha Jaishankar is the Executive Director of the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund (MSCRF). She is a scientist by training who has devoted her career to developing cures for debilitating and life-threatening conditions of our time and to advancing this field, through various roles in federal, university, and industry settings. She talks about the history of the MSCRF, its programs to promote the commercialization of stem cell-based technologies, and its role in the Maryland stem cell resea...
May 17, 2022•1 hr 10 min
Dr. Ophir Klein is the inaugural Executive Director of Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children's and the David and Meredith Kaplan Distinguished Chair in Children's Health. He discusses his work on intestinal epithelium regeneration, which he will present at the “Tissue Fibrosis and Repair: Mechanism, Human Disease, and Therapies” Keystone Symposium taking place from June 12-16th in Keystone, Colorado. He also talks about mechanisms of tooth development, analyzing three-dimensional facial images to diagnos...
May 03, 2022•1 hr 8 min
Dr. David Hay is the Chair of Tissue Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, where his group is defining novel ways to produce liver tissue from PSCs. They use in vitro derived tissue to better model human liver physiology and to develop supportive cell based therapies for disease. Dr. Hay also founded Stimuliver, a company that is developing a disruptive liver implant to treat critically failing liver function in humans. He talks about hepatocyte differentiation, liver disease modeling, and...
Apr 19, 2022•1 hr 7 min
Dr. Agnete Kirkeby is an Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen and a Group Leader at Lund University. The Kirkeby group studies the factors involved in human neural subtype specification in order to enable production of specific neurons for understanding and treating neurological diseases. They apply advanced human stem cells models to understand how hundreds of human neuronal subtypes are formed during embryo development. She talks about moving stem cell therapies for Parkinson's ...
Apr 05, 2022•1 hr 12 min
Dr. Melissa Little is the President, Keith Alm is the CEO, and Dr. Amander Clark is the Vice President of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR). They discuss what they're looking forward to at the upcoming ISSCR 2022 meeting, and the future of the organization and the stem cell research community.
Mar 22, 2022•1 hr 12 min
Dr. Kelly McNagny is a Professor of Medical Genetics and Biomedical Engineering at the University of British Columbia. His research program is focused on hematopoietic stem cell biology, specifically in understanding the signaling networks that regulate stem cell differentiation and how these cells interact with their microenvironment. He talks about how hematopoietic stem cell differentiation is related to chronic inflammatory disorders, targeting glycosylation in solid tumors, and his internat...
Mar 08, 2022•1 hr 13 min
Dr. Mingxia Gu is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. Her lab's goal is to develop novel therapies for the regeneration of the heart, lung, and vasculature in patients with congenital cardiac and pulmonary defects. She talks about developing lung organoids to study COVID-19, how multi-lineage organoids can mimic human tissues, and her lab's motto to "move fast and break things."
Feb 22, 2022•1 hr 10 min
Dr. Alejo Rodriguez-Fraticelli is a Group Leader at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Barcelona, where his team studies stem cell memory and epigenetics in hematopoiesis, immunity, and leukemia. He talks about setting up a new lab as a "playground for scientists," how cancer is the "evil twin" of regeneration, and advanced methods for lineage tracing.
Feb 08, 2022•1 hr 4 min
Dr. Nazish Sayed is an Assistant Professor of Surgery at the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute. His lab is focused on developing new technologies that drive innovation in regenerative medicine, disease modeling, and drug testing in vascular biology. He talks about developing an inflammatory aging clock, using iPSC-derived endothelial cells to run a clinical trial in a dish, and his experience as a cancer patient.
Jan 25, 2022•1 hr 20 min
Dr. Ru Gunawardane is the Executive Director at the Allen Institute for Cell Science. She leads a group of researchers creating a collection of high-quality gene edited stem cell lines to study cell organization and activities through live cell imaging. Dr. Katylyn Gerbin is a Scientist at the Allen Institute, whose work focuses on implementing cardiac differentiation methods and developing the cardiomyocyte pipeline using gene-edited hiPSCs. They discuss the Institute's mission to understand th...
Jan 11, 2022•1 hr 11 min
Dr. Ilyas Singeç is the Director of the Stem Cell Translation Laboratory at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, where he leads a group of scientists working to address efficiency, reproducibility, scalability, and other roadblocks in the translation of iPSCs into therapies. He discusses the standardization of stem cell differentiation, high-throughput cell culture, personalized medicine, and the potential for biomanufacturing in space.
Dec 14, 2021•1 hr 19 min
Dr. Sara Wickström is the Sigrid Juselius Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of Helsinki, and was recently appointed as the new Director of Cell and Tissue Dynamics at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine. Her research focuses on how mechanical forces act in collaboration with cellular signals to influence cell fate and position. She discusses her work on mechanotransduction and its applications for cell culture and organ engineering, as well as her resea...
Nov 30, 2021•1 hr 8 min
Dr. Christine Mummery is a Professor of Developmental Biology at the Leiden University Medical Center and the former President of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. She pioneered studies on cardiomyocytes from human embryonic stem cells and was among the first to inject them in mouse hearts after myocardial infarction. She talks about her recent research developing multi-lineage cardiac model systems like microtissues and organ-chips.
Nov 16, 2021•1 hr 20 min
Dr. Kate Rubins is a NASA astronaut and microbiologist. She has completed two expeditions to the International Space Station and spent 300 days in space. She became the first person to sequence DNA in space in 2016, and grew cardiomyocytes in cell culture (in collaboration with Arun in Joseph Wu’s lab at Stanford) while in orbit. She has a PhD in Cancer Biology from Stanford University and studied viral diseases as a Fellow/Principal Investigator at the Whitehead Institute.
Nov 02, 2021•1 hr 4 min
Dr. Maria Millan is the President and CEO of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which aims to accelerate stem cell treatments for patients with unmet medical needs. Dr. Millan is a physician-scientist who has devoted her career to treating and developing innovative solutions for children and adults with debilitating and life-threatening conditions, both as a transplant surgeon and in the private sector.
Oct 19, 2021•1 hr 23 min
Dr. Paul Knoepfler is a Professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Human Anatomy, the Genome Center, and the Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California, Davis. His lab is interested in the epigenetics of stem cells and cancer, and uses cutting-edge molecular, cellular, and developmental biology methods as well as genomic and gene editing technologies to answer key questions in these areas of research.
Oct 05, 2021•1 hr 13 min
Dr. Jennifer Trowbridge is an Associate Professor at the Jackson Laboratory and an Adjunct Professor at Tufts University. Her lab studies genetics and epigenetics in hematopoietic stem cell biology and leukemia. Their long-term goal is to identify new intervention strategies to extend the “healthspan” of HSCs by maintaining their robust regeneration capacity into older age and reducing risk of development of blood cancers.
Sep 21, 2021•1 hr 10 min
In this special episode of the Stem Cell Podcast, we speak with three postdocs from different parts of the world about their research in and outside of the lab. Drs. Bria Macklin, Matthew Sinton, and Leili Rohani discuss their research on vascularization, immunometabolism, and cardiac tissue engineering, respectively, as well as their long-term career goals.
Sep 07, 2021•1 hr 20 min
Dr. Connie Eaves is a Distinguished Scientist at the Terry Fox Laboratory at the British Columbia Cancer Agency and a Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on leukemia and breast cancer and the normal tissues in which these diseases originate. Her pioneering research in basic blood stem cell biology led to a breakthrough in treatment for leukemia.
Aug 24, 2021•1 hr 25 min
Dr. Ken Poss is the James B. Duke Professor of Cell Biology and Head of the Duke Regeneration Center at Duke University. His lab investigates the initial morphogenesis and injury-induced regeneration of several tissues in zebrafish. He is also President of the newly-founded International Society for Regenerative Biology.
Aug 10, 2021•1 hr 9 min
