The Stem Cell Podcast

Dr. Kelly McNagny is a Professor of Medical Genetics and Biomedical Engineering at the University of British Columbia. His research program is focused on hematopoietic stem cell biology, specifically in understanding the signaling networks that regulate stem cell differentiation and how these cells interact with their microenvironment. He talks about how hematopoietic stem cell differentiation is related to chronic inflammatory disorders, targeting glycosylation in solid tumors, and his international career path.

Dr. Mingxia Gu is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. Her lab's goal is to develop novel therapies for the regeneration of the heart, lung, and vasculature in patients with congenital cardiac and pulmonary defects. She talks about developing lung organoids to study COVID-19, how multi-lineage organoids can mimic human tissues, and her lab's motto to "move fast and break things."

Dr. Alejo Rodriguez-Fraticelli is a Group Leader at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Barcelona, where his team studies stem cell memory and epigenetics in hematopoiesis, immunity, and leukemia. He talks about setting up a new lab as a "playground for scientists," how cancer is the "evil twin" of regeneration, and advanced methods for lineage tracing.

Dr. Nazish Sayed is an Assistant Professor of Surgery at the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute. His lab is focused on developing new technologies that drive innovation in regenerative medicine, disease modeling, and drug testing in vascular biology. He talks about developing an inflammatory aging clock, using iPSC-derived endothelial cells to run a clinical trial in a dish, and his experience as a cancer patient.

Dr. Ru Gunawardane is the Executive Director at the Allen Institute for Cell Science. She leads a group of researchers creating a collection of high-quality gene edited stem cell lines to study cell organization and activities through live cell imaging. Dr. Katylyn Gerbin is a Scientist at the Allen Institute, whose work focuses on implementing cardiac differentiation methods and developing the cardiomyocyte pipeline using gene-edited hiPSCs. They discuss the Institute's mission to understand the fundamentals of how cells work, how they generate their gene-edited stem cell lines, and their recent work tracking cell states in hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes.

Dr. Ilyas Singeç is the Director of the Stem Cell Translation Laboratory at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, where he leads a group of scientists working to address efficiency, reproducibility, scalability, and other roadblocks in the translation of iPSCs into therapies. He discusses the standardization of stem cell differentiation, high-throughput cell culture, personalized medicine, and the potential for biomanufacturing in space.

Dr. Sara Wickström is the Sigrid Juselius Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of Helsinki, and was recently appointed as the new Director of Cell and Tissue Dynamics at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine. Her research focuses on how mechanical forces act in collaboration with cellular signals to influence cell fate and position. She discusses her work on mechanotransduction and its applications for cell culture and organ engineering, as well as her research on the hair follicle stem cell niche. She also talks about running an interdisciplinary lab, and what could make academia a more attractive career path.

Dr. Christine Mummery is a Professor of Developmental Biology at the Leiden University Medical Center and the former President of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. She pioneered studies on cardiomyocytes from human embryonic stem cells and was among the first to inject them in mouse hearts after myocardial infarction. She talks about her recent research developing multi-lineage cardiac model systems like microtissues and organ-chips.

Dr. Kate Rubins is a NASA astronaut and microbiologist. She has completed two expeditions to the International Space Station and spent 300 days in space. She became the first person to sequence DNA in space in 2016, and grew cardiomyocytes in cell culture (in collaboration with Arun in Joseph Wu’s lab at Stanford) while in orbit.  She has a PhD in Cancer Biology from Stanford University and studied viral diseases as a Fellow/Principal Investigator at the Whitehead Institute.

Dr. Maria Millan is the President and CEO of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which aims to accelerate stem cell treatments for patients with unmet medical needs. Dr. Millan is a physician-scientist who has devoted her career to treating and developing innovative solutions for children and adults with debilitating and life-threatening conditions, both as a transplant surgeon and in the private sector.