ISSCR Elections

Dr. Jaenisch received his MD degree from the University of Munich in 1967. After postdoctoral research at Princeton and the Fox Chase Cancer Center, he first joined the faculty at the Salk Institute and later became Head of the Department of Tumor Virology of the Heinrich-Pette Institute in Hamburg.

The overall focus of Dr. Jaenisch's research is on epigenetics, reprogramming and stem cell biology. When at the Salk Institute he generated the first transgenic mice by infecting embryos with viruses and used later embryonic stem cells for understanding cancer, neurological and connective tissue diseases, and developmental abnormalities. Also, he used these methods to explore basic questions such as the role of DNA modification, genomic imprinting, X chromosome inactivation, nuclear cloning, and, most recently, the nature of stem cells. More recently Dr. Jaenisch has demonstrated that somatic cells can be reprogrammed in vitro to pluripotent ES-like cells and that these cells are suitable to correct both genetic and induced defects in mice by transplantation therapy. Using this technique for turning skin cells into stem cells, the lab has been able to cure mice of sickle cell anemia -- the first direct proof that these easily obtained cells can reverse an inherited disease. Present work focuses on using the iPS technology to study neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson and Alzheimer disease.

Dr. Jaenisch has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, USA, in 2003 and is a member of the German Academy of Natural Sciences. He has received numerous honors including the First Peter Gruber Foundation Award in Genetics in 2001, the Robert Koch Prize for Excellence in Scientific Achievement in 2002, the Charles Rodolphe Bruphacher Foundation Cancer Award in 2003, the Vilcek Foundation Prize for Achievements of Prominent Immigrants in 2007, the Meira and Shaul G. Massry Prize in 2008, the Ernst Schering Prize in 2009, the Kazemi Prize of the Royan Institute in 2010 and the Massachusetts General Hospital Warren Triennial Prize, the Wolf Prize for Medicine and the National Medal of Science in 2011.

Statement on Important Issues on the Horizon for ISSCR

"1. An issue of great importance for the stem cell field remains the unfounded promise and uncontrolled misuse of "stem cell therapies" by various clinics and companies. I think it is crucial that the society continues using its expertise, authority and clout to educate and inform the public about unfounded promises of stem cell therapy. It would seem imperative that ISSCR devotes efforts and resources to unmask charlatans and crooks promising rapid stem cell cures.

2. Given the misconceptions of the stem cell field in parts of congress and the public it may be worthwhile to consider activities that would help influencing public opinion.

3. While the annual meeting remains one of the most visible missions of the society it may be useful to consider expanding these efforts and establish smaller meetings and workshops with the goal to educate scientists who want to enter the field."

Dr. Daley is also Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Medicine, and Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Associate Director of Children's Stem Cell Program, founding member of the Executive Committee of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and past-President of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (2007-2008). Dr. Daley chaired the international task force that authored the ISSCR Guidelines for the Conduct of Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research (2006) and as ISSCR President empaneled and served on the ISSCR Task Force that produced the Guidelines for the Clinical Translation of Stem Cells (2008). Dr. Daley's research seeks to translate insights in stem cell biology into improved therapies for genetic and malignant diseases. Important research contributions from his laboratory include the creation of customized stem cells to treat genetic immune deficiency in a mouse model (together with Rudolf Jaenisch), the differentiation of germ cells from embryonic stem cells (cited as a "Top Ten Breakthrough" by Science magazine in 2003), and the generation of disease-specific pluripotent stem cells by direct reprogramming of human fibroblasts (cited in the "Breakthrough of the Year" issue of Science magazine in 2008). As a graduate student working with Nobelist Dr. David Baltimore, Dr. Daley demonstrated that the BCR/ABL oncogene induces chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in a mouse model, which validated BCR/ABL as a target for drug blockade and encouraged the development of imatinib (Gleevec^TM; Novartis), a revolutionary magic-bullet chemotherapy that induces remissions in virtually every CML patient. Dr. Daley's recent studies have clarified mechanisms of Gleevec resistance and informed novel combination chemotherapeutic regimens.

Dr. Daley received his bachelor's degree magna cum laude from Harvard University (1982), a PhD in biology from MIT (1989), and the MD from Harvard Medical School, where he was only the twelfth individual in the school's history to be awarded the degree summa cum laude (1991). He served as Chief Resident in Internal Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital (94-95) and is currently a staff physician in Hematology/Oncology at the Children's Hospital and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and a member of the Hematology Division of the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. He has been elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the American Association of Physicians, and the American Pediatric Societies, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Daley was an inaugural winner of the NIH Director's Pioneer Award for highly innovative research and has received the Judson Daland Prize from the American Philosophical Society for achievement in patient-oriented research, the E. Mead Johnson Award from the American Pediatric Society for contributions to stem cell research, and the E. Donnall Thomas Prize of the American Society for Hematology for advances in human induced pluripotent stem cells.

Dr. Connie J. Eaves joined the BC Cancer Agency as a Senior Scientist and the Department of Medical Genetics of the University of British Columbia as an Assistant Professor in 1973. She was a co-founder of the Terry Fox Laboratory in 1981 and became its Deputy Director from 1986-2007, Director from 2007-2010 and was Vice President of Research of the BC Cancer Agency and Associate Dean of Research in the Faculty of Medicine from 2008-2011. She has received numerous scholarships and awards, including election as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1993 and recipient of the NCIC annual Robert L. Noble Prize for Excellence in Cancer Research in 2003, the ISEH Metcalf Award in 2008, the ASH Henry Stratton Award in 2009, and the Cdn Blood Services Lifetime Achievement Award (with A Eaves) in 2011.

Her PhD studies discovered that 2 cell populations contribute to the generation of antibody responses heralding the subsequent recognition of B and T cells. She has since focused on stem cell biology, contributing many seminal advances about blood-forming stem cells and their regulation in both normal and perturbed states, with a particular emphasis on chronic myeloid leukemia. Over the last decade, she has also become an expert in breast stem cells and human embryonic stem cells.

She has published more than 400 papers and continues to direct an active and dynamic research group. She is a major protagonist of excellence in the training of postgraduate students and fellows having personally supervised more than 80 graduate students and post-doctoral fellows (both post-MD and post-PhD). She has also served in many senior leadership positions including the Presidency of the Canadian NCI in 1997-8 and the Presidency of ISEH from 2002-3. She continues to review grants and papers for both national and international audiences and sustains an interest in promoting collaborative translational and interdisciplinary research activities and programs.

Dr. Lin's work is focused on the self-renewing mechanism of stem cells using Drosophila/mouse germline stem cells and human embryonic stem cells as models. He also studies germline development and stem cell-related cancers.

Dr. Lin received his BS from Fudan University (1982), PhD from Cornell University (1990), and postdoctoral training at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. He joined the faculty of Duke University in 1994, where he rose to the rank of Full Professor. He founded/directed the Duke Stem Cell Research Program (2005-2006), and moved to Yale in 2006 to establish Yale Stem Cell Center.

Dr. Lin made key contributions to the demonstration of stem cell asymmetric division, the proof of the stem cell niche theory, the discovery of the argonuate piwi gene family and their essential function in stem cell self-renewal and germline development, as well as the discovery of a novel class of non-coding small RNAs called PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs), which was hailed by Science as one of the ten Scientific Breakthroughs of 2006.

Dr. Lin is a founding member of the ISSCR, and has provided numerous services to the ISSCR, including its Membership Committee (2005-2008), Abstract Review Committee (2008, 2009), Chair of the 2011 Annual Meeting Program Committee (2010-2011), Speaker at the 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 7th ISSCR Annual Meetings, Chair of the Publication Committee (2009-), Board of Directors (2009-), the ISSCR Advisory Committee to Cell Stem Cell (2010-), and the 2012 Annual Meeting Program Committee (2011-2012).

His other services to the stem cell community include positions on the Medical Advisory Board of New York Stem Cell Foundation (2009-), External Advisory Board of the NIH-NHLBI Progenitor Cell Biology Consortium (2010-), Stem Cell Planning Committee of the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (2010-), and Editorial Boards of Stem Cells (2005-2008), Cell Stem Cell (2007-2010), and StemBook (2007-). He was a Featured Editor of Nature Reports Stem Cells (2009).

Beyond the stem cell community, he has served on the NIH study sections (1998-2005, 2007, 2012), the NIH Director's Pioneer Award Interview Committee (2009), editorial boards of Journal of Cell Biology (2009-), Current Opinion in Cell Biology (2009-), Biology of Reproduction (2009-2010), and Cell Research (2010-), the Board of Directors of the Society of Chinese Biological Investigators (2002-2008), Advisory Council of RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology, Japan (2007-), Council of Society of Chinese Bioscientists in America (2008-), advisory committees of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2008-), and Shantou University Council (2010-), etc.

Dr. Lin received many awards and honors, including the American Cancer Society Junior Faculty Research Award (1996), the March of Dimes Basil O'Connor Scholar Award (1996), the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship (1996), Membership of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering (2007-), the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Award (2007, 2011), the American Society of Andrology Lecturer Award (2008), the Laura Hartenbaum Breast Cancer Foundation's Legacy for Hope Award (2009), the Ellison Medical Foundation Senior Scholar Award (2010), and the NIH Director's Pioneer Award (2010). He is an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2010-).

Christine Mummery has been a member of the board of ISSCR since 2008. She studied Physics and has a PhD in Biophysics from the University of London. She received a postdoctoral fellowship from the Royal Society (UK) for research at the Hubrecht Institute where she became group leader and in 2002, Professor of Developmental Biology. Dr. Mummery's research concerned mouse development and differentiation of mouse and human embryonic stem cells, in particular the role of growth factor signalling in directed differentiation. She has pioneered studies characterizing cardiomyocytes from hES cells and was among the first to inject them in mouse heart and assess their effect on myocardial infarction.

In 2007, Dr. Mummery spent sabbatical leave in Harvard University as a joint Harvard Stem Cell Institute/Radcliffe fellow.

In 2008 Dr. Mummery moved with her group to Leiden University Medical Centre where she was appointed chair of the Department of Anatomy and Embryology. Here she continues research on heart development and the differentiation of pluripotent human iPS and hES cells into the cardiac and vascular lineages. Immediate interest of her lab is on using stem cell derived cardiomyocytes and vascular cells as disease models, for drug discovery and future cardiac repair. She presently serves on Medical and Ethical Councils of the Netherlands Ministry of Health (CCMO), providing specialized advice on human embryos and stem cell clinical trials, and is a member of the board of the Netherlands Medical Research Council (ZonMW). She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Boards of several stem cell institutes and EU research programmes and has written a popular book on stem cells Stem Cells: Scientific Facts and Fiction (2011) intended as a semi-lay guide to stem cell biology and applications. She is also deputy editor/ editorial board member of Stem Cell Research, Cell Stem Cell and Stem Cells and president of the International Society of Differentiation (2010-2012).

In 2010 Christine Mummery was elected as a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science. In the same year she became a member of the board of the academy.

David Scadden and Professor Douglas Melton founded and jointly direct the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and founded and co-chair the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology Department at Harvard University, the first department to span faculties in Harvard's history. Dr. Scadden is a hematologist/oncologist and directs the Center for Regenerative Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital while also chairing the Hematologic Malignancies program in the MGH Cancer Center. He is an expert on the medical applications of stem cell biology with a particular emphasis on their use in the settings of cancer and AIDS. He has published over 250 scientific papers and book chapters and his laboratory has made fundamental contributions in how the stem cell niche regulates stem cell function. He is the recipient of numerous honors including membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science and awards from the Doris Duke Charitable Trust, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. He has served or serves on the Board of Scientific Counselors for the National Cancer Institute, the Board of External Experts for the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and is an Associate Member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.

Dr. Scadden serves on multiple editorial boards and scientific advisory boards and is a scientific founder of Fate Therapeutics, a private biotechnology company.

Sally Temple was raised in York, England. She received a BA in developmental neuroscience from Cambridge University, UK and a PhD working with Martin Raff FRS at University College London on optic nerve development. She attended Columbia University, NYC to study spinal cord development with Tom Jessell, before moving to Miami University where her husband was attending medical school.

In Miami, Dr. Temple discovered that the embryonic mammalian brain contained a rare stem-like cell, a study published in Nature in 1989. Since then she has continued to make pioneering contributions to the field of stem cell research, focused on the question of how neural stem cells alter their developmental potential over time to generate diverse progeny.

Dr. Temple became a professor at Albany Medical College in the Center for Neuroscience and Neuropharmacology in 2003, and was awarded the prestigious Jacob Javits merit award from NIH in 2003.

In August 2007 she co-founded an independent non-profit research institute, the Neural Stem Cell Institute, and the Regenerative Research Foundation in Rensselaer NY, with the mission of using neural stem cells to develop therapeutics for eye, brain and spinal cord disorders. As scientific director of NSCI she oversees the research mission, from basic to translational projects, and is responsible for the staff, budget and developing the strategic plan for the institute. Sally is a member of the board of directors of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, and of the medical advisory boards of the NY Stem Cell Foundation and the Genetics Policy Institute. In 2008, Dr. Temple was awarded a MacArthur fellowship in recognition of her contributions to neural stem cell developmental biology.

Austin Smith was born in 1960 in Ormskirk, near Liverpool, England. He studied Biochemistry at Oxford University and did his PhD in Edinburgh with Martin Hooper. He returned to Oxford for post-doctoral research with John Heath. Dr. Smith was appointed a Group Leader at the Centre for Genome Research in Edinburgh in 1990. He became Director in 1996 and formed the Institute for Stem Cell Research. In 2006 he moved to Cambridge where he is founding Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell Research.

Dr. Smith's research is centered on the biology of embryonic stem (ES) cells and in particular the molecular basis of self-renewal and pluripotency. His work has contributed to delineating pivotal extrinsic and intrinsic regulators of the pluripotent state in vitro and in the mammalian embryo. He has published over 100 research reports and written several influential reviews. Dr. Smith is a Medical Research Council Professorial Fellow, an elected member of EMBO, and a Fellow of the Royal Societies of Edinburgh and of London. In 2010 he was awarded the Prix Louis Jeantet.

Several discoveries from the Smith lab have been patented and licensed. Dr. Smith was scientific advisor to Stem Cell Sciences Ltd and has had research collaborations with GSK, Aventis, AstraZeneca and Pfizer.

Dr. Smith has supervised 19 PhD graduates. He has trained more than 30 post-doctoral fellows, several of whom now lead independent research groups, and he has sponsored and mentored junior group leaders in Edinburgh and Cambridge.

Dr. Smith coordinated EuroStemCell, the first large-scale European collaborative stem cell project, and currently heads a successor project EuroSyStem. Together with Clare Blackburn he organises the European Summer School in Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. He is also co-organiser of the Advances in Stem Cell Research series of European conferences. Dr. Smith is an Editor of Development and on the Editorial Boards of EMBO Journal and EMBO Molecular Medicine. He is an advisory board member for research institutes in Europe, Japan and Canada.

Dr. Smith has contributed to reports on stem cell and embryo research by the Royal Society, the Academy of Medical Sciences, and EMBO. He has met with parliamentarians and officials in various European countries. He regularly engages with the media and speaks at open meetings.

Dr. Tanaka has been internationally recognized for her work rejuvenating the study of regeneration biology. By developing molecular genetics and imaging techniques in the salamander, Ambystoma mexicanum, she has defined the stem cells that undertake limb regeneration and their potency. She has also performed clonal studies of the neural stem cells responsible for spinal cord regeneration and has identified the molecular pathways triggered by injury that induce their self-renewal and their regenerative phenotype. More recently she has begun applying this knowledge toward directing the morphogenesis and differentiation of mouse and human neural stem cells.

Elly Tanaka studied as an undergraduate at Harvard University, performing her thesis work with Lawrence S.B. Goldstein. Her doctoral studies were performed at University of California at San Francisco with Marc W. Kirshner where she applied digital technologies to imaging microtubules in neuronal axons. She then travelled to London as a Musclular Dystrophy Society and Helen Haye Whitney Foundation post-doctoral fellow to start her studies on salamander limb regeneration with Jeremy P. Brockes. There Dr. Tanaka established molecular techniques to study serum factors that induce cell cycle re-entry of regenerative salamander cells. Upon taking up a junior group leader position at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden in 1999, she initiated live imaging and molecular genetics approaches to studying spinal cord and limb regeneration.

Elly Tanaka's honors include the Biofutures Award from the German Federal Ministry of Biotechnology and Research (2003), as well as a European Research Council Advanced Investigator Award (2011).