2022 Election Results

Valentina Greco is the Carolyn Walch Slayman Professor and Vice-chair of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Genetics Department, Yale School of Medicine. 

ISSCR is home to diverse disciplines within the regenerative field ranging from basic to translational research, clinical application and policy making – each area vital to positively impact human health. This global Covid pandemic has shown us that partnerships across diverse fields and quality of professional relationships are critical pieces to develop solutions more quickly towards saving human lives. It has also brought to light the inequity of the systems we navigate across the globe and exacerbated the already existing disproportionate burden that falls on memberships that are put in more vulnerable positions (i.e. historically excluded memberships, junior PIs, less supported geographic locations, non-ivy league institutions, etc). As we move forward together, continued innovation in regenerative biology will depend on our ability to support the creativity and talent of all ISSCR community across all these groups. This requires us to rethink our current systems and structures: What voices are we not hearing and/or excluding? What metrics are we using to celebrate and nourish our community? What costs are we tolerating that contribute to loss of talented colleagues? Do we value the quality and health of the process as much as the products we generate? Together, we can build a future for our international society that aligns our actions with our aspiration – one that expects and draws from diverse thinking and one that invests in everyone so as to empower the exceptional talent we are surrounded by in order to improve human health. 

Valentina Greco was born in Palermo, Italy and earned her undergraduate degree in Molecular Biology at the University of Palermo, Italy. She earned her PhD with Suzanne Eaton at the EMBL/MPI-CBG, Germany (1998-2002) and her post-doc with Elaine Fuchs at The Rockefeller University (2003-2009). Dr. Greco was hired in 2009 as an Assistant Professor in the Genetics department at Yale School of Medicine. She is currently the Carolyn Walch Slayman Professor of Genetics, Cell Biology and Dermatology Departments, and a member of the Yale Stem Cell Center and Yale Cancer Center. 

Greco lab members aim to define how tissues maintain themselves throughout the course of our lives in the face of continuous cellular turnover, frequent injuries, and spontaneous mutations. To do so we have developed novel tools that integrate imaging of stem cells in their niche in live mice with both genetic and cell biological approaches, allowing us to understand the complex orchestration of tissue regeneration using the skin as model system. This novel live imaging approach has repeatedly led to a significant number of breakthroughs, including but not limited to 1) stem cell position dictates fate in the hair follicle, 2) a stem cell-mediated phagocytic clearance mechanism regulates the size of the hair follicle stem cell pool and 3) the unanticipated plasticity of the skin epithelium to correct aberrant tissue growths induced by mutational and non-mutational insults.  

Dr. Greco has served in numerous leadership roles in the scientific community including within the ISSCR as Chair of the Junior Investigator Committee (2014-2017), member of the Strategic Oversight Committee (2020-present), Annual Meeting Program Committee Member (2019 and 2022), Nominating Committee (2016-2018) and Board Member (2016-2022). She also serves on numerous additional boards including President Elect for the Society of Investigative Dermatology (SID), SID Board member (2016-2020), Member of the National Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases Advisory Council (NAMSAC 2022-), Member of the Yale Ciencia Academy Advisory Committee, Member of the 2030STEM Leadership Team and Secretary of Board of Directors of the Life Science Editors Foundation. 

Greco Lab research has been recognized by numerous accolades awarded to both lab members and Dr Greco. She in particular has received the 2014 Women in Cell Biology Junior Award (WICB) for Excellence in Research from the American Society of Cell Biology (ASCB), the 2014 ISSCR (International Society for Stem Cell Research) Outstanding Young Investigator Award, the 2015 Robertson Stem Cell Investigator Award from the New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF), the 2015 Mallinckrodt Scholar Award, the 2016 Early Career Award from the American Society of Cell Biology (ASCB), the 2016 HHMI Faculty Scholar Award, the 2017 Glenn Foundation Award, the 2017 Class of ‘61 Award by the Yale Cancer Center, the 2018 Yale Mentoring Award in the Natural Sciences, the 2019 Yale Genetic Department Mentoring Award, the 2019 Yale Post-doc Mentoring Award, the 2019 NIH DP1 Pioneer Award and the 2021 ISSCR Momentum Award. 

Dr. Svendsen is the Kerry and Simone Vickar Family Foundation Distinguished Chair in Regenerative Medicine and Executive Director of the Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, USA .

Dr. Clive Svendsen did his predoctoral training at Harvard University and received his PhD from the University of Cambridge in England, where he subsequently became a Welcome Fellow and established a laboratory focusing on stem cell research. In addition, he founded and ran an England-based subsidiary of a large US company focused on using advanced electrochemical detection to quantify brain neurochemistry.  In 2000 he moved to the University of Wisconsin as Professor of Neurology and Anatomy and founded the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center. In 2010, he moved to Los Angeles and founded the Cedars-Sinai Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute, which currently has 25 faculty members and over 150 staff, and is currently Executive Director.  

 Dr. Svendsen has long-been interested in growth factors and protection of neurological function.   Early in his career he worked with neurosurgeons and neurologists to coordinate the first-ever clinical trial infusing the growth factor, GDNF, directly into the putamen of patients with Parkinson’s Disease. In parallel he discovered a new way to propagate and maintain fetal neural stem/ progenitor cells, which allowed long-term growth and cGMP manufacturing. These cells retained the potential to make astrocytes, could be modified to release GDNF and are being used in two CIRM-funded Phase I/IIa clinical trials to treat ALS. He is the Sponsor on these trials, as well as a separate CIRM-funded Phase I/IIa clinical trial using neural stem/ progenitor cells to treat Retinitis Pigmentosa, a disease leading to blindness. Another major focus of his work is to use human induced pluripotent stem cells to model and treat various human diseases. His lab was one of the first to develop an iPSC-based model of neurodegenerative disease, specifically spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).  He has subsequently helped initiate several consortiums to model Huntington’s Disease and ALS. Answer ALS, one of the largest disease modeling consortiums, is making 1000 patient iPSC lines, differentiating them into motor neurons and performing large scale -omics to discover patient subtypes. In addition, Dr. Svendsen’s lab uses microfluidic “organ-on-chip” technology to recreate human multicellular systems for research and drug development, which was highlighted on  the front cover of National Geographic. 

Dr. Svendsen has received many awards including the Shelia Essay Award for ALS research from the American Academy of Neurology, the Commitment to a Cure Award from The ALS Association, the Huntington’s Disease Society of America Trailblazer Award, and an Allen Distinguished Investigator Award. He is on many scientific boards and advisory committees, including the NIH NEI Audacious Goals Initiative Steering Committee. His passion for stem cell education is exemplified by years of organizing and chairing multiple large stem cell meetings co-sponsored by Cell Symposia, CIRM and The ALS Association as well as his work in stem cell outreach to high school students.  Finally he has deep financial experience through setting up a company in the UK and coordinating large complex budgets for consortium grants.  

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. She has been a member of the ISSCR since its inception, and has served on a number of committees of the Society. 

Helen Blau was born in London and is a dual citizen of the United States and Great Britain. She earned a B.A. from the University of York, England and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard. After a postdoctoral fellowship in the Departments of Biochemistry and Biophysics and the Division of Medical Genetics at the University of California, San Francisco, she joined the faculty at Stanford. She was awarded an endowed chair in 1999 and named Director of the Baxter Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology in 2002. She serves as Associate Editor of Nature Regenerative Medicine, and on the editorial boards of Stem Cell Reports, and PNAS. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. 

Dr. Blau is a co-inventor on 20 patents. Her laboratory’s innovation has garnered an NIH MERIT Award, an NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award, an NIH EUREKA Grant for Exceptionally Innovative Research, and numerous California Institute for Regenerative Medicine awards. Blau has served in numerous leadership roles including as a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers and SAB of the Ellison Medical Foundation. She enjoys educating students and postdoctoral fellows, sharing her enthusiasm for research, and training them to be outstanding scientists. 

A hallmark of Blau’s research is the use of multi-disciplinary approaches to regenerative medicine for acquired and inherited diseases. She is renowned for her nuclear reprogramming experiments which demonstrated the plasticity of cell fate by cell fusion.  Blau’s laboratory focuses primarily on muscle stem cells (MuSCs), a potent specialized population that resides within adult skeletal muscle tissues, poised to repair muscle damage throughout life. Blau’s group forged methods to prospectively isolate MuSCs using fluorescence activated cell sorting (FACS), employed high-resolution lineage mapping by single-cell mass cytometry (CyTOF) to resolve a functional MuSC subset, and monitored the dynamics of stem cell expansion during regeneration by bioluminescence imaging (BLI). Her lab overcame the loss of stem-cell function seen on plastic culture dishes by mimicking healthy young muscle tissue elasticity using bioengineered hydrogel niches. To surmount the marked reduction in viable stem cells upon MuSC transplantation, Blau’s lab employed self-assembling peptide amphiphiles to generate biomimetic cell-encapsulating scaffolds that protect and align cells during delivery, coupling bioengineering with stem cell biology to establish new principles.  

Recently Blau’s lab discovered that aged muscle tissues can be rejuvenated by targeting a single enzyme, 15-PGDH, the Prostaglandin E2 degrading enzyme, a pivotal determinant of muscle aging. Remarkably, 15-PGDH overexpression triggers atrophy in young muscles, whereas its inhibition rejuvenates and strengthens aged muscles. The potency of PGE2, which accumulates following enzyme inhibition, arises from its dual targets: muscle stem cells and mature myofibers. These findings hold promise for translation to the clinic to augment strength in patients with muscular dystrophies and sarcopenia, the debilitating loss of muscle function with aging for which there currently is no treatment.

Within the ISSCR, Dr. Blau served on the Education Committee (2003-2006), the 2019 Annual Meeting Program Committee, and is currently serving on the 2023 Annual Meeting Program Committee and the Stem Cell Reports Editorial Board (2013-2022).

Kathy Niakan is Mary Marshall and Arthur Walton Professor of the Physiology of Reproduction and Director of the Centre for Trophoblast Research at the University of Cambridge and Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute. 

Dr. Niakan is Mary Marshall and Arthur Walton Professor of the Physiology of Reproduction and Director of the Centre for Trophoblast Research at the University of Cambridge from 2020. She is Chair of Cambridge Reproduction, an interdisciplinary strategic research initiative bringing together expertise from 42 different departments, faculties and associated institutions to offer fresh perspectives on reproduction and to engage with the public on sensitive areas of research. From 2021, she has been an Honorary Group Leader at the Babraham Institute and Affiliate Member of the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute. She is Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute, formerly the National Institute for Medical Research, since 2013. 

Dr. Niakan's experience as a refugee informs her approach and commitment to diversity and inclusion, which she aims to support and represent in any role. Her family fled Iran during the Iran-Iraq war and eventually emigrated to the USA. This experience allows her to bring insights into the language, cultural, social and economic barriers that other immigrants or underrepresented minorities may face. 

Her laboratory pioneered approaches to investigate the function of genes that regulate early human development and the molecular mechanisms that direct cell fate in human embryos. Her laboratory obtained the first nationally regulated approval to genetically modify human embryos in research which attracted widespread policy interest. This research licence was acquired as part of the permanent collection at the Science Museum in London, where scientific objects from her laboratory have also been exhibited. Additionally, through a long-standing collaboration with Professor Mary Herbert at the University of Newcastle, Dr. Niakan's laboratory provided extensive pre-clinical data that led to the development of novel techniques for using mitochondrial replacement therapy to treat disease, and this collaborative work influenced the decision of the UK Parliament to approve the clinical use of these methods. The developmental processes studied by her laboratory are crucial to our understanding of human biology. Dr. Niakan's laboratory seeks to improve the clinical treatment of infertility and developmental disorders, and their advocacy informs the ethical use of stem cells in research and medicine. 

Dr. Niakan has provided evidence and advice in genome editing to members of the UK Parliament House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee, European Commission, WHO and an International Commission on the clinical use of germline genome editing, among numerous other international government agencies and policy teams. She was a member of the Task Force Committee to update the ISSCR Guidelines in 2021. She is a 2019 Blavatnik Award UK Finalist in Life Sciences.  

Dr. Niakan obtained a B.Sc. in Cell and Molecular Biology and a B.A. in English Literature from University of Washington, supported by a Mary Gates Research Scholarship. She obtained her PhD at University of California, Los Angeles, supported by a National Institutes of Health Pre-doctoral Training Grant, Paul D. Boyer Fellowship and a Chancellor’s Dissertation Year Fellowship. She undertook postdoctoral training at Harvard University. She was also a Centre for Trophoblast Research Next Generation Research Fellow at University of Cambridge. 

Dr. Kriegstein is the John Bowes Distinguished Professor in Stem Cell and Tissue Biology and Founding Director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCSF.

Dr. Kriegstein is the Founding Director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCSF. Dr. Kriegstein received a BS from Yale University (1971), and MD and PhD from New York University (1977). He completed his Neurology Residency at the Brigham and Women’s, Children’s, and Beth Israel Hospitals, Boston, and is a board-certified clinical neurologist. He has held academic appointments at Stanford, Yale, and Columbia before joining UCSF in 2004.  

Dr. Kriegstein was director of one of the largest and most comprehensive stem cell programs in the US for over 17 years. The Center encompasses over 70 laboratories focused on disorders ranging from heart disease and diabetes to cancer and diseases of the nervous system. Dr. Kriegstein’s own research focuses on the stem cell niche and ways neural stem and progenitor cells produce neurons in the developing brain. He found that radial glial cells, long thought to simply guide nerve cells during migration, are neuronal stem cells in the developing brain. More recently, Dr. Kriegstein discovered a radial glia-type cell, the oRG cell, within the developing human brain that produces transit amplifying daughter cells. These cells, not present in small brain mammals, help explain the enormous developmental and evolutionary expansion of the human cerebral cortex. Together with colleagues at UCSF, he also developed methods to derive human inhibitory cortical interneurons from pluripotent stem cells, a finding that led to the founding of Neurona Therapeutics, an early-stage biotechnology company. Neurona has just received IND clearance to initiate a Phase 1/2 clinical trial of neural cell therapy for medically intractable temporal lobe epilepsy. 

Among other honors, Dr. Kriegstein was elected to the National Academy of Medicine and was twice awarded a Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award from the NINDS and is a current recipient of the Outstanding Investigator Award. He was selected Senior Visiting Professor by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Astor Visiting Professor, University of Oxford. He serves on the NINDS Council and has served as member and then Chair of the ISSCR Publications Committee and was elected ISSCR Treasurer in 2016, serving in that capacity through June 2019.

Ken Zaret is the Joseph Leidy Professor in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, and the Director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at UPenn.