The Stem Cell Podcast

Guest: Dr. Alysson Muotri is a Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Cellular & Molecular Medicine at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine, and Co-Director of the UCSD Stem Cell Program. His research focuses on modeling neurological diseases using human iPSCs, and he is leading a project investigating the effect of microgravity on human brain organoids. Fe...

Intro: Back in June 2019, we attended the International Society for Stem Cell Research’s (ISSCR) annual conference in Los Angeles, California! Here is the first of three special episodes featuring interviews with some of the top researchers in the stem cell field, as well as with up-and-coming junior trainees who talked to Daylon about their research and experience at the conference. Junior...

Guest: Dr. Steve Szilvassy is the Senior Director, Head of Hematopoietic Products at STEMCELL Technologies. He has over 25 years of experience in the fields of hematology and oncology, having held a variety of research positions, including research scientist and project team leader, in both academia and industry. Featured Products and Resources: Live Webinar: Optimized Workflows for High-Efficienc...

Guest: Dr. Ubaka Ogbogu is an Associate Professor at the University of Alberta cross-appointed to the Faculties of Law and Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences. He is interested in the ethical, legal and societal implications of novel and emerging biomedical research and health care technologies. Featured Products and Resources: Jobs at STEMCELL Technologies Mesenchymal Stromal Cell Updates and...

Guest: Dr. Jennifer Adair is an Assistant Member in the Clinical Research Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Her lab uses a combination of cell biology, molecular biology, chemistry, engineering, nanomedicine and bioinformatics to develop new gene therapy treatments for many different diseases, including cancer. Her goal is to develop safe, cost-effective and clinically relevant a...

Guest: Dr. Arun Sharma is a Senior Research Fellow in the Svendsen lab at Cedars-Sinai. His research focuses on the applications of iPSCs for studying cardiovascular biology, modeling diseases in a dish with genome editing technologies, and developing high-throughput platforms for screening drug toxicity and efficacy. Featured Products and Resources: STEMdiff™ Cardiomyocyte Webinar: Modeling Arrhy...

Guest: Dr. James Hudson is Group Leader of the Organoid Research Laboratory at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane, Australia, whose research is focused on developing state-of-the-art bioengineering approaches for human 3D organoids to use for studying cardiac biology and discovering new heart disease therapeutics. Featured Products and Resources: STEMdiff™ Cardiomyocyte Webi...

Guest: Dr. Tannishtha Reya is a Professor of Pharmacology and Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. Her lab  focuses on understanding the signaling pathways that regulate the choice between stem cell renewal and commitment, and define how the same signals are subverted in cancer. Featured Products and Resources: Cancer Stem Cell News Dunn Webinar: Understanding Pancreatic Developmen...

Guest: Dr. Bertie Göttgens is a Professor of Molecular Hematology at the University of Cambridge. His lab studies how transcription factor networks control the function of hematopoietic stem cells, and how mutations that perturb such networks cause leukemia. In this episode, he talks about his research and his groundbreaking paper that mapped mouse gastrulation and early organogenesis. Featured Pr...

Guest: Dr. Adrian Teo is a Principal Investigator at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore. His research focuses on using stem cell technology to model human pancreatic development in vivo and to study the mechanisms that cause diabetes and underlie diabetic complications. Featured Products and Resources: Pancreatic Cel...

Guest: Dr. Rita Perlingeiro is the Lillehei Professor in Stem Cell and Regenerative Cardiovascular Medicine at the Lillehei Heart Institute. Her lab is interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms controlling lineage-specific differentiation of pluripotent stem cells, and applying this information to generate tissue-specific stem/progenitor cells endowed with in vivo regenerative potential...

Guest: Dr. Josef Penninger is the Director of the Life Sciences Institute at the University of British Columbia and a Canada 150 Chair in Functional Genetics. He was previously the Scientific and Founding Director of the Institute for Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His research is focused on understanding the complex mechanisms of how diseases develop, particularly in...

Guest: Dr. Kristen Brennand is an Associate Professor of Genetics and Genomics, Neuroscience, and Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.  A major focus of her work is in developing in vitro models for schizophrenia in order to identify novel insights into the molecular and cellular phenotypes of mental illness. Her lab has established a new mechanism using iPSC-base...

Guest: Dr. Robert Mays is the Co-founder and Vice President of Regenerative Medicine and Head of Neuroscience Programs at Athersys Inc .  He focuses on Athersys’ proprietary stem cell product, MultiStem ® , and its applications in regenerative medicine and drug discovery, with a specific  focus on injuries and diseases affecting the central nervous system. Featured Resource: Apply to become...

Guest: Dr. Andrew Murphy is an Associate Professor at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute and Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He seeks to understand the processes by which hematopoietic stem cells and the bone marrow niche become affected in disease, specifically in the context of cardiovascular and metabolic disease. Featured Resource: Apply to become a co-host on the Stem Cell Podc...

Guest: Dr. Paul Frenette is the Chair and Director of the Ruth L. and David S. Gottesman Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Frenette’s research focuses on the molecular and cellular constitutents of the stem cell niche, mechanisms of sickle cell vaso-occlusion, the role of the nervous system in cancer, and understanding...

Guest: Dr. Stephanie Willerth is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of Victoria. Her research focuses on using engineering-based approaches to stem cell biology. Her team develops bioactive scaffolds for directing stem cell differentiation, and investigates the expression of transcription factors that regulates this process. The goal of her group’s research is...

Guest: Dr. James Wells is the Director for Research in the Division of Endocrinology at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, as well as the Chief Scientific Officer at the Center for Stem Cell and Organoid Medicine ( CuSTOM ). His research focuses on understanding the embryonic development of the pancreas and gastrointestinal organs by identifying mechanisms involved in the embryonic development...

Guest: Dr. Carla Kim is a Professor in the Division of Hematology/Oncology and Pulmonary Respiratory Diseases at Children’s Hospital Boston, as well as in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and in the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. Her research involves characterizing the biology of stem cells in the normal lung and in lung cancer using a combination of mouse genetics, cell biology...

Guest: Dr. Jeffrey Millman is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Engineering at the Washington University in St. Louis. His research focuses on the  in vitro production and study of pancreatic insulin-producing β cells from human pluripotent stem cells for use in cellular replacement therapy and drug screening. He joins us to discuss his research. Resources and Links Efficient Scarl...

Guest: Dr. Sandra Ryeom is the Assistant Professor of Cancer Biology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. Dr. Ryeom’s lab focuses on understanding the contribution of endothelial cells in different organs towards maintaining stem cell populations. She joins us to discuss her work and recent paper in Nature Communications . Resources and Links Zaps to Brain to Ease...

Guest: Dr. Karun Singh is a Principal Investigator, Associate Professor and the David Braley Chair in Human Stem Cell Research at McMaster University. The overall goal of Dr. Singh’s research program is to use stem cell-based models to study neurological disorders and devise new therapies for these conditions. His latest paper discusses an iPSC knockout resource for functional studies of autism-ri...

Guest: Dr. Pamela Robey is a senior investigator at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research at the NIH. Dr. Robey’s work focuses on skeletal biology, and the characteristics and biological properties of bone marrow stromal cells, a subset of which are multipotent skeletal stem cells.  In late September, Dr. Robey co-authored a commentary article in Nature discussing the ever fam...

Guest: Dr. Benjamin Dekel is a leading investigator in the field of human renal stem cell biology and regenerative medicine. He is the Head of the Pediatric Stem Cell Research Institute and the Director of the Division of Pediatric Nephrology at the Edmond and Lily Safra Children’s Hospital, Sheba Medical Center , Israel. Resources and Links Gene Editing Creates Mice with Two Dads – Research...

Guest: Dr. Tsvee Lapidot is a Professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science. His research investigates the regulation of normal and leukemic hematopoietic stem cells by the brain-bone-blood triad in transplanted mice. In this episode we talk to him about his research and his latest study in Cell Stem Cell looking at the influence of circadian rhythms on regulation of blood stem cells. Resources a...