The Stem Cell Podcast

Guest: Dr. Ryan Flynn is a Principal Investigator at Boston Children’s Hospital and an Assistant Professor in t he Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology Department at Harvard University. His lab explores the interface between RNA and glycans. He talks about the discovery of glycoRNA and the chemistry of the RNA-glycan connection . He also discusses the effects of glycans on stem cell function a...

Guest: Dr. Blair Benham-Pyle is an Assistant Professor at Baylor College of Medicine. She talks about how multipotent cells in  Schmidtea mediterranea  enable  whole-body regeneration . She also discusses the effects of the mechanical environment on stem cell fate. Featured Products and Resources: Register for ISSCR 2024! Get updates about new mentorship content from Lab Coats & Life™ The Stem...

Guests: Dr. Amander Clark is the President of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) and Founding Director of the Center for Reproductive Science, Health, and Education at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Agnete Kirkeby is a Program Chair of the ISSCR Annual Meeting, Associate Professor at Lund University and the University of Copenhagen, and Group Leader at the Nov...

Guest: Dr. Marissa Scavuzzo is an HHMI Hanna H. Gray Fellow at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Her research focuses on enteric glia regulation in the healthy and diseased gut. She talks about how glial cell subtypes affect intestinal motility and her experience receiving NYSCF and HHMI fellowships. She also talks about bringing science to underserved schools in Cleveland . Feat...

Guest: Dr. Ritu Raman is the d’Arbeloff Career Development Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, where her lab uses robotics and tissue engineering to treat muscle loss. She talks about  light-activated muscle grafts ,  magnetic microparticles to control forces exerted on cells , and strategies for science communication. Featured Products and Resources: Register now for ISSCR 2024,...

Guest: Dr. Shiri Gur-Cohen is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Regenerative Medicine at UC San Diego. Her lab studies epithelial stem cells throughout their lifetimes. She talks about  lymphatics in the intestinal stem cell niche , 3D imaging techniques, and  sharing her science with a wider audience . Featured Products and Resources: Submit your abstract for ISSCR 2024! Get u...

Guest: Dr. Malin Parmar is a Professor at Lund University and a New York Stem Cell Foundation – Robertson Investigator. Her research aims to understand cell fate specification in the developing brain and in human neural progenitor cells using cell-based models of neuronal differentiation. She talks about using assembloids to model the dopaminergic system ,  direct reprogramming somatic cells into...

Guest: Dr. Olivier Pourquié is the Frank Burr Mallory Professor of Pathology and Professor in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. His work focuses on the segmentation clock and the development of muscles and vertebrae. He talks about studying somitogenesis  in vitro  and his work on  brown fat development . Featured Products and Resources: Register now for ISSCR 2024! Derive and...

Guests: Dr. Hwee Goon Tay is an Assistant Professor at the Duke-National University of Singapore Medical School and Dr. Beau Fenner is an Ophthalmologist at the Singapore National Eye Centre. Their work focuses on cell therapy for degenerative retinal diseases. They talk about strategies to slow degeneration and potentially restore vision. Featured Products and Resources: Enter to win up to $500 U...

Guest: Dr. Jose Polo is a Professor of Epigenetics and the Director of the Centre for Epigenetics at the University of Adelaide. He is also a Professor in the Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology at Monash University. His lab studies the transcriptional and epigenetic mechanisms that govern cell identity. He talks about his team’s work on cell fate,  iBlastoids , and  placental mo...

Guests: Dr. Stefan Irion is the Chief Scientific Officer of BlueRock Therapeutics and Dr. Viviane Tabar is the Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.  In this special episode, recorded in front of a live audience in New York, they talk about their work on BlueRock’s clinical trial for bemdaneprocel — a stem cell-derived investigational cell therapy...

Guest: Dr. Helen Blau is the Donald E. and Delia B. Baxter Foundation Professor and Director of the Baxter Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology at Stanford University. Dr. Blau’s research focuses on the basic molecular mechanisms of stem cells and muscle and their application to aging, regenerative medicine, and disease. Her lab aims to understand and apply biology to improve quality of life, and thei...

Guest: Dr. Roger Foo is the Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan Professor of Medicine and Head of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. His lab investigates the molecular mechanisms that regulate cardiac biology and disease. He talks about the genetics of heart disease and the roles of circular RNAs. Featured Products and Resources: Register for a live podcast recor...

Guest: Dr. Bas Trietsch is the Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder at Mimetas , a company working to contribute to groundbreaking therapies with their screenable, physiologically relevant 3D human disease models. He talks about tissue-relevant models for drug discovery, and how organ-on-a-chip technology can help address scalability and reproducibility. Featured Products and Resources: Registe...

Guest: Dr. Thorold Theunissen is an Assistant Professor of Developmental Biology at Washington University in St. Louis investigating the molecular basis of pluripotency, the mechanisms of trophoblast development, and the generation of stem cell-based embryo models. Dr. Rowan Karvas is a CRM Fellow in Regenerative Medicine working in the Theunissen lab. They talk about their recent work developing ...

Guest: Dr. Nicolas Rivron is a Principal Investigator at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. His group recreates embryonic development using mammalian stem cells in a dish to better understand the encoded principles of self-organization. He talks about  building human blastoid models  and using them to study implantation. He also discusses differ...

Guests: Dr. Laura Andres-Martin is a Research Investigator, Oncology, Dr. Daniel Paul is the Senior VP, Discovery & Platform Development, and Dr. Raeka Aiyar is the VP, Scientific & DEIB Outreach at the New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF). This episode was recorded live and in-person at the NYSCF Research Institute. The panelists talk about NYSCF’s approach to automation, their wom...

Guest: Dr. Nathaniel Huebsch is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. His lab focuses on understanding how mechanical cues originating at cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix contacts influence signaling and fate. They are especially interested in how those cues affect heart development and disease. He talks about cardiac models and cardiomyocyt...

Guest: Dr. Thomas Durcan is an Associate Professor and Director of the Early Drug Discovery Unit at the Montreal Neurological Institute. He oversees a team of 40+ research staff and students, committed to applying patient-derived stem cells towards the development of phenotypic discovery assays and 3D neuronal organoid models for neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders. He talks about m...

In June 2023, we attended ISSCR 2023, the annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, in Boston. We spoke with delegates about their research and impressions of the meeting, including their reasons for attending, what they were most looking forward to, and the most memorable research presented. Featured Products and Resources: Register for a live, in-person podcast recordin...

Guest: Dr. Thomas Zwaka is the Director of the Huffington Center for Cell-Based Research in Parkinson’s Disease and a Professor of Regenerative and Developmental Biology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. His research focuses on fundamental questions surrounding stem cell biology, including how to reverse the process of differentiation and “re-program” any given cell type into a...

Guest: In June 2023, Daylon and Arun attended the International Society for Stem Cell Research’s (ISSCR) annual meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, and recorded daily episodes discussing highlights of the final day of the meeting. In this episode, they discuss some of the research presented during Concurrent Track E, as well as Plenary V and VI, which were focused on modeling development and d...

Guest: In June 2023, Daylon and Arun attended the International Society for Stem Cell Research’s (ISSCR) annual meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, and recorded daily episodes discussing highlights of the third day of the meeting. In this episode, they discuss the research presented throughout Concurrent Tracks C & D, as well as some of the meeting drama that resulted. They also highlight...

Guest: In June 2023, Daylon and Arun attended the International Society for Stem Cell Research’s (ISSCR) annual meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, and recorded daily episodes discussing highlights of the second day of the meeting. In this episode, they discuss Concurrent Tracks A & B and highlight some of the research on epigenetic regulation of distinct cell states presented during Plena...

Guest: In June 2023, Daylon and Arun attended the International Society for Stem Cell Research’s (ISSCR) annual meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, and recorded daily episodes discussing highlights of the first day of the meeting. In this episode, they discuss the pre-meeting workshops, including Arun’s own talk on stem cell research in space, as well as highlights from the morning&#8217...