The Stem Cell Podcast

Guest: Dr. Louis Vermeulen is a Principal Investigator at the Center for Experimental Molecular Medicine at the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam, and the New York Stem Cell Foundation, where he is focusing on the role of stem cells in colorectal cancer development and progression. He aims to develop improved preventative strategies and novel therapies for this disease by studying the effects o...

Guest: Dr. Kelly Frazer is the Director of the UC San Diego Institute for Genomic Medicine and Founding Chief of the Division of Genome Information Sciences in the Department of Pediatrics at UC San Diego. Dr. Frazer has spent the past 25 years studying various aspects of functional and structural human genomics. In this episode she talks to us about her recent paper looking at the mutational burd...

Guest: Dr. Joseph C. Wu, MD, PhD is Director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute and Simon H. Stertzer Endowed Professor in Department of Medicine (Cardiology) and Department of Radiology at the Stanford School of Medicine. Dr. Wu is a pioneer in using iPS cells in personalized medicine and we talk to him about his work and the state of the field in respect to novel stem cell therapies for ca...

Guest: Dr. Charles Murry is the Woods Professor of Pathology, Bioengineering and Medicine/Cardiology at the University of Washington. He also serves as Director of the UW’s Heart Regeneration Program, with the goal of achieving stem cell-based heart regeneration in patients. He has recently published a paper that used stem cell derived heart cells to treat heart damage in monkeys. Featured Resourc...

Guest: Dr. David Knapp is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford. Colin Hammond is a graduate student in Dr. Connie Eaves’ lab at the BC Cancer Agency. Dr. David Knapp and Colin Hammond talk about their recent publication in Nature Cell Biology regarding stem cell populations in cord blood cells. Featured Resource: Webinar: Re-Creating Disease with Kidney Organoids and CRISPR Res...

Guest: Samantha is an enthusiastic Science Communicator completing her PhD at the University of Toronto. Her doctoral research focuses on brain development and stem cell biology, under the supervision of renowned scientist Dr. Derek van der Kooy. We talk with Sam about her research and also about how she embraces science communication, using it to tell her science story! Featured Resource: STEMdif...

Intro: In early 2018, STEMCELL Technologies put out a call for scientists to visit their Vancouver facilities and peer review them against their company motto of “Scientists Helping Scientists”. Out of over 300 applicants, three postdoctoral fellows were selected to form the peer review team; they visited STEMCELL in April 2018 and conducted their review over three days. In this special episode of...

Guest: Dr. Joseph Ciacci, MD, is a board-certified neurosurgeon with extensive experience in neuro-oncology of the spine and brain. Dr. Ciacci’s primary interests include tumors of the spine and brain, complex spinal reconstruction, and stereotactic radiosurgery, a form of radiation therapy that focuses high-power energy on a small area of the body. In this episode we talk to him about the results...

Guest: Dr. Benjamin Freedman is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine, Division of Nephrology. Dr. Freedman is currently performing biomedical research using human pluripotent stem cells to model kidney disease pathophysiology and develop new therapies. In this episode we talk about his work studying kidney disease and his latest paper in Cell Stem C...

Guest: Dr. Nicolas Rivron leads the Laboratory for Synthetic Embryology at the MERLN Institute for technology-driven regenerative medicine and at the Hubrecht Institute for Developmental Biology and Stem Cell Research. His laboratory created the blastoid system , the first model of early, pre-implantation embryos made in a dish from stem cells. Featured Resource: STEMdiff™ Trilineage Differentiati...

Guest: Peter Lengyel is the co-founder and “Beer Commander” of Kings County Beer Collective in Brooklyn, NY. Pete managed big name laboratories at Rockefeller University, UCSF and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals but after spending a huge amount of his time brewing beer first as a hobbyist, he made the leap to brewing full time. Pete started his first professional brewing enterprise in Bushwick Brooklyn...

Guest: Dr. Valeria Orlova is the Principal Investigator at the Leiden University Medical Center. Dr. Orlova’s lab uses stem cells to study the blood vessels and vasculature. She joins us to talk about her work and latest findings. Featured Resource: STEMdiff™ Trilineage Differentiation Kit – Functional Assay Kit to Assess Pluripotency by Directed Differentiation of Human ES and iPS Cells to...

Guest: Evangelos Kiskinis, PhD is an Assistant Professor in Neurology at Northwestern University.  His lab focuses on addressing fundamental aspects of the biology of human neurons in the context of physiological conditions and in the context of diseases such as ALS. Featured Resource: Madeline Lancaster on Brain Organoids: Modeling Human Brain Development in a Dish Webinar Resources and Links How...

Guest: Dr. Janet Rossant is a Senior Scientist in the Developmental & Stem Cell Biology Program at The Hospital for Sick Children and is a Professor in both the Department of Molecular Genetics and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Toronto. Her research interests center on understanding the genetic control of normal and abnormal development in the early mouse em...

Guest: Dr. Nenad Bursac talks about a technology his group has developed and tested as a candidate therapy for myocardial infarction and heart failure. Dr. Nenad Bursac’s research interests include pluripotent stem cell therapies for heart and muscle disease, cardiac and skeletal muscle tissue engineering, cardiac electrophysiology and arrhythmias, genetic modifications of stem and somatic cells,...

Guest: Dr. William Dunworth is an Account Manager at STEMCELL Technologies and will be talking about his transition from bench to industry, and what advice he has to offer in terms of careers in stem cell science beyond the bench. Featured Resource: Celebration of Science Resources and Links Study on Gun-Policy Effects Finds Important Gaps in Existing Research – One of the largest-ever studi...

Guest Dr. Justin Ichida is the Assistant Professor in the Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Southern California.  Dr. Ichida’s laboratory creates  in vitro  models of human neurodegenerative diseases by converting patients’ cells into disease-affected neural cells. Featured Resource: Madeline Lancaster on Brain Organoids: Modeling Human Brain Developmen...

Guest Dr. Fernando Camargo is a Principal Investigator at Boston Children’s Hospital and Professor in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University. Dr. Camargo’s laboratory’s ultimate goal is to understand the signals that regulate adult stem cell maturation and tissue regeneration and has a strong interest in studying the cellular and molecular biology of hemat...

Guest Dr. Kapil Bharti is a Principal Investigator at the National Eye Institute at the NIH.  His work involves performing translational research on degenerative eye diseases using induced pluripotent stem cell technology. Dr. Bharti’s group uses this technology to develop in vitro disease models to study patient-specific disease processes, to set up high throughput drug screens, and to develop ce...

Guest Dr. April Pyle is an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is also a member of the Eli and Edythe Broad Stem Cell Center, the Center for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCLA. Dr. Pyle’s lab uses multi-disciplinary approaches to study hum...

Guest Dr. Michele De Luca has been involved in epithelial stem cell biology aimed at clinical applications in regenerative medicine for over 20 years. He joins the show to discuss his work and latest groundbreaking paper published in Nature. Featured Resource: Growing Organoids from Stem Cells Wallchart Resources and Links New Tax Plan Closer to Passing and Impacting Science – If the new tax plan...

Guest Dr. Leigh Turner is an associate professor in the center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota. Turner’s research addresses ethical, legal, and regulatory issues associated with clinics engaged in direct-to-consumer marketing of unproven and unlicensed cell-based interventions. Dr. Turner is an author of numerous publications including a recent paper in Cell Stem Cell along with The S...

Guest The Stem Cell Podcast and STEMCELL Technologies introduce the first interview in a new series called, “Alternative Science Careers.”  For the first part of this series, we are pleased to interview the host of our very own Stem Cell Podcast, Dr. Kiki Sanford. Featured Resource: Organoid Research Resources and Links In New Budget, Graduate Student Taxes Could Go Up – This editorial...

Guest Dr. Chad Cowan is a Principal Investigator and Associate Professor in Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University. Chad joins the hosts to talk about CRISPR and its uses with stem cell biology to study disease. Featured Resource: Investigating Metabolic Disease with Human Pluripotent Stem Cells Webinar Resources and Links E-Cigarettes Can Lead Teens to Higher Smoki...

Guest Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of North Carolina Medical Center, Catherine Coombs, talks to us about her work and her recent paper in Cell Stem Cell on the subject of clonal hematopoiesis. Featured Resource: Targeting Self-Renewal Function in Normal Hematopoietic and Leukemic Stem Cells Webinar Resources and Links An Estimated 124 Million Boys and Girls Are Now in the High...