The Stem Cell Podcast

Guests: Dr. Valentina Greco is the President of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR), and Professor of Genetics and Co-Chair of the Status of Women in Medicine at Yale University. Dr. Kathryn Cheah is an ISSCR Program Committee Co-Chair and Emeritus Professor and Chair of Biochemistry at Hong Kong University. Dr. Eugenia Piddini is also an ISSCR Program Committee Co-Chair and P...

Guest: Dr. Robert Zweigerdt is a Principal Investigator at Hannover Medical School, where his lab focuses on cardiac differentiation and the scalable culture of PSCs. He talks about regulating the lineage-specific differentiation of hPSCs and generating heart-forming organoids that mirror developmental cardiogenesis . He also discusses the importance of mentorship and the benefits of an internatio...

Guest: Dr. Giorgia Quadrato is Assistant Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on brain developmental and neural organoids. She talks about protocols for generating cerebellar organoids , including those with functional Purkinje cells . She also discusses a transcriptomic atlas of neural organoids and the stem cell research...

Guests: Drs. Andrew Elefanty and Elizabeth Ng are Senior Principal Investigator and Principal Investigator, respectively, at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. In the Blood Development group, they aim to develop innovative cellular therapies for blood and  cartilage-related diseases. They talk about  their recent study deriving and transplanting HSCs , their work on reporter lines, a...

Guest: Dr. Marius Wernig is a Professor of Pathology and a Co-Director of the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Stanford University, where his research interests include direct reprogramming and neurological disease modeling. He talks about his early work reprogramming neuronal cells from fibroblasts, adopting iPSCs, and growing his lab. He also discusses his recent rese...

Guest: Dr. Jonathan Thomas “JT” is the President and CEO of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) , an organization that provides funding for stem cell research with the purpose of accelerating treatments for patients in need. He talks about working to ensure diversity in clinical trials and developing treatments that are affordable and accessible to patients. He al...

Guest: Dr. Milica Radisic is a Professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of Toronto. Her lab uses organ-on-a-chip engineering to mimic physiology of the heart, kidney, and vasculature for the purpose of modeling human disease and discovering more effective drugs. In this episode, she talks about the challenges of studying the heart and strategies to mature cardiomyocytes. She also disc...

Guest: Dr. Cynthia “Cindy” Dunbar is National Institutes of Health (NIH) Distinguished Investigator and Chief of the Translational Stem Cell Biology Branch at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the NIH. She talks about using macaques to study hematopoiesis and aging, and the challenges and considerations for using these models. She also discusses her collaborative study ...

Guest: Dr. Mansi Srivastava is Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and Curator of Invertebrate Zoology at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. Her lab uses distantly related species to study evolution and regeneration. She talks about establishing Hofstenia miamia , or the three-banded panther worm, as a model system. She also discusses her lab’s work...

Guest: Drs. Dina Radenkovic (now Dina Turner) and Bruna Paulsen are Co-Founder & CEO and VP of Manufacturing and Therapeutic development at Gameto, a biotech company developing treatment solutions to improve women’s reproductive health. Their lead platform, Fertilo, uses ovarian support cells to mature oocytes outside of the body with the goal of making IVF and egg freezing shorter, safe...

Guest: Dr. Meritxell Huch is a Scientific Director at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics and an Honorary Professor at the Technical University of Dresden. Her research focuses on liver and pancreas organoid models.  She discusses a protocol for liver mesenchyme and ductal cell organoid co-culture  and  generating bipotent stem cells from the liver . She also tells her...

Guest: Dr. Samantha Morris is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Associate Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. She talks about dissecting and manipulating the genetic pathways that regulate cell identity. She discusses  tools to measure cell fate transitions  and incorporating  in silico  and  in vitro  experiments. Featured Products an...

Guest: Dr. Alfonso Martinez Arias is the CREA Research Professor in the Department of Systems Bioengineering of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. He talks about his path to developmental biology research and developing gastruloids to model human development . He also discusses  standards for embryo models  and his recent research on  hematopoiesis . Featured Products and Resources: Keep c...

Guest: Dr. Behzad Yeganeh is an Associate Scientist at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute and the University of Ottawa. His work focuses on lung development and injury. He talks about neonatal lung diseases and the mechanisms that regulate autophagy and apoptosis. Featured Products and Resources: Keep current with the latest in pulmonary cell news. Model the human...

Guest: Dr. Dmitriy Sheyn is an Associate Professor in the Department of Orthopedics and Regenerative Medicine Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. His lab focuses on the development of stem cell therapies for multiple musculoskeletal disorders caused by acute injuries and aging. He talks about ways to model disc degeneration and tendon injuries. He also discuses his lab’s work on  tendo...

Guest: Dr. Ludovic Vallier is the W3 Einstein Strategic Professor for Stem Cells in Regenerative Therapies at the Berlin Institute of Health and a Max Planck Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics. His lab uses stem cells to model embryonic development in vitro and to produce liver cells with an interest for cell therapy. He talks about modeling non-alcoholic fatty liver disease...

Guest: Dr. Ziyuan Guo is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Center for Stem Cell & Organoid Medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. He talks about in vivo reprogramming and cell and gene therapy in neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders. He also discusses  assembloids to model the blood-brain barrier  and strategies for organoid vascularization. Featured Products...

Guest: Dr. Irving Weissman is the Virginia and Daniel Ludwig Professor of Clinical Cancer Research and Professor of Pathology and Developmental Biology at Stanford University. Dr. Weissman was the first scientist to identify and isolate mammalian blood-forming stem cells in mice, and his work has contributed to the understanding of how a single hematopoietic stem cell can give rise to specialized...

Guests: Dr. Davide Marotta is the Program Director for In-Space Biomanufacturing at the International Space Station National Laboratory. Dr. Catriona Jamieson is the Director of the Sanford Stem Cell Institute at the University of California, San Diego.  In this special episode recorded in front of a live audience at ISSCR 2024 in Hamburg, Germany, they talk about the opportunities and challenges...

Guest: Dr. Valentina Greco is the Carolyn Walch Slayman Professor of Genetics and Co-Chair of the Committee on the Status of Women in Medicine at Yale University. Her research focuses on tissue homeostasis in the face of continuous cellular turnover, frequent injuries, and spontaneous mutations. She talks about her research on skin and hair follicle stem cells, the role of imaging techniques, and...

Guest: Dr. Sara Vasconcelos is a Senior Scientist and the John Kitson McIvor Endowed Chair in Diabetes Research at University Health Network. She is also an Associate Pr ofessor at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto. Her lab studies microvascular regeneration in cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, and are working to develop personalized patient-derived organ-chi...

Guest: Dr. Sebastian Diecke is a Group Leader and Stem Cell Core Director at the Max Delbrück Center, where his research focuses on iPSCs and organoid models. He talks about the early days of iPSC research, developing organoids from endangered rhinoceros , and  modeling Huntington’s and other diseases . Featured Products and Resources: Check out the program for ISSCR 2024, happening July 10-...

Guest: Dr. Shukry Habib is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the Université de Lausanne. His lab works at the intersection of stem cell biology, biophysics, and tissue engineering to investigate how tissues form. He talks about developing a transplantable bandage for bone repair  and the role of Wnt signaling and cytonemes in development. Featured Products and Reso...

Guest: Dr. Shankar Srinivas is a Professor of Developmental Biology in the Department of Physiology Anatomy and Genetics based in the Institute for Developmental and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Oxford. He is also a Zeitlyn Fellow and Tutor in Medicine at Jesus College. Using mouse and human embryos as model systems, his group looks at the control of patterning and morphogenesis duri...

Guest: Dr. Pierre Vanderhaeghen is a Professor and Principal Investigator at VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research. His lab studies the mechanisms of cortical development and brain evolution. He talks about  species-specific neuronal development ,  human neuron excitability , and playing in a rock cover band! Featured Products and Resources: Register now for ISSCR 2024, taking plac...