About EuroStemCell

Philip Newsome is Professor of Experimental Hepatology and Clinical Director of the Birmingham University Stem Cell Centre. He is an Area Lead (Liver Regeneration) in the NIHR Birmingham Liver Biomedical Research Unit.

Philip has published over major research papers in scientific journals as well as reviews and book chapters in the fields of stem cell biology and liver disease. He has received major grants from NIHR, European Union, Wellcome Trust, UKSCF, BBSRC and the Medical Research Council.

He is an enthusiastic communicator on the theme of translational stem cell work and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and gives frequent talks to various groups at both the local and national level. Philip frequently contributes to both the local and national media and continues to advise the BBC on stem cell-related stories.

Usher Institute for Population Health Sciences and Informatics

Sarah Chan is a recently-appointed Chancellor’s Fellow at the Usher Institute for Population Health Sciences and Informatics, University of Edinburgh. She was educated at the University of Melbourne, Australia, where she completed degrees in biological science and in law, and spent a number of years as a researcher in a molecular biology laboratory before moving to work in the area of science policy and stem cell ethics. In 2005 Sarah took up a Research Fellowship in Bioethics and Law at the Centre for Social Ethics and Policy, University of Manchester, where she also completed a MA in Health Care Ethics and Law and a PhD in Bioethics. From 2009 to 2015 she was Deputy Director of the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation, University of Manchester. Her research interests and publications cover areas including the ethics of gene therapy and genetic information, enhancement, research ethics, stem cells, animal ethics, transhumanism, and the ethics of science and innovation.

Born in Stockholm in 1957, Urban Lendahl studied biology at Stockholm University from 1978-1982, specializing in molecular biology. After earning his PhD at the Karolinska Institute in 1987 (with Professor Lars Wieslander as advisor), Lendahl was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT 1987-1989 with Professor Ron McKay as mentor. After returning to the Karolinska Institute, Lendahl became Professor of Genetics in 1997. Lendahl is a member of the Nobel Assembly for Physiology or Medicine since 2001, and was during 2012 Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine. Lendahl’s research is focused on developmental biology, stem cells and intracellular signaling pathways, notably the Notch signaling pathway.

Lendahl has served as head of the review committee at the Human Frontiers Science Foundation, and serves at evaluation committees at the Swedish Research Council and the Swedish Cancer Society. Lendahl is currently director of three research centers in stem cell research and regenerative medicine: DBRM (www.dbrm.se), StratRegen and WIRM (the Wallenberg Institute for Regenerative Medicine). Lendahl holds since 2010 a Distinguished Professor Award at the Karolinska Institute, is Editor-in-Chief for the journal Experimental Cell Research and is a Member of the Board of Trustees for the Koerber European Science Award.

The Tajbakhsh group focuses on identifying and characterising skeletal muscle stem cells. They use a genetic approach to examine how skeletal muscle stem cells are born, and how they acquire their identity. They also investigate the cell division mechanisms that govern self-renewal and differentiation during embryonic development and in the adult. They are able to isolate skeletal muscle stem cells for potential therapies using engineered fluorescent markers.

Giulio Cossu has a long lasting interest in the field of muscle cell and developmental biology. He discovered the myogenic potential of a bone-marrow derived, circulating progenitor cell (Ferrari et al., Science 1998). He also identified a novel population of vessel associated stem cell, the mesoangioblasts (Minasi et al. Development 2002; Dellavalle et al. Nature Cell Biol. 9, 255, 2007) that proved effective in the treatment of a mouse and dog models of muscular dystrophy (Sampaolesi et al. Science, 2003; Sampaolesi et al. Nature, 2006; Gargioli et al. Nature Medicine, 2008).

Center for Regenerative Medicine University of Modena and Reggio Emilia

Professor De Luca, and his principal collaborator Graziella Pellegrini, have been involved in epithelial stem cell biology aimed at clinical application in regenerative medicine for over 20 years. Beside his work on the use of human epidermal stem cell cultures in life-saving treatment of massive full-thickness burns and in repigmentation of stable vitiligo and piebaldism, he established human limbal stem cell culture aimed at corneal regeneration in patients with severe limbal stem cell deficiency. This treatment leads to recovery of vision in patients with poor alternative options for therapy. Michele De Luca is currently coordinating the first (successful) ex-vivo epithelial stem cell-mediated gene therapy clinical trial for the gene therapy of junctional epidermolysis bullosa, a serious genetic skin disease. He is also studying molecular mechanisms regulating self-renewal, proliferative potential and clonal evolution of epithelial stem cells.

Read an interview with Michele De Luca.

Paolo De Coppi is a Consultant Paediatric Surgeon at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), and Reader and Head of Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine at the UCL Institute of Child Health in London.

He has been an Honorary Professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, since 2013, an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, since 2009 and an Honorary Assistant Professor in Paediatric Surgery at the University of Padua, Italy, since 2005. He co-ordinates the EU Horizon2020 funded stem cell research consortium - INTENS which aims to aims to make a functional reconstructed bowel for people with Short Bowel Syndrome.

Giuseppe Testa is head of the stem cell epigenetics unit at the European Institute of Oncology. He is also Deputy Principal Investigator in the Research Unit on Biomedical Humanities. He is the cofounder of the interdisciplinary PhD program FOLSATEC (Foundations of the Life Sciences and Their Ethical Consequences) in Milan.

Gerald holds the position of Scientific Director of the European Research Institute for the Biology of Ageing. The general scope of studies in his Laboratory is to further improve the understanding of mechanisms that specify normal stem cell functioning. Studies focus on hematopoietic stem cells, largely because superior technical tools and invaluable functional assays exist to study stem cells in this particular tissue. Gerald’s group is interested in the unique genetic and epigenetic program that distinguishes stem cells from non-stem cells.

Daniel Besser studied biology at the Freie Universität Berlin and obtained his diploma in 1990. He received his PhD in 1996 from the university of Basel with a thesis from the Friedrich-Miescher-Institute, Basel on signal transduction in the gene regulation of urokinase-type plasminogen activator. He worked at Rockefeller University, New York until 2004 in the laboratories of Hidesaburo Hanafusa and James E. Darnell on Stat3 signaling and the function of c-Src; and from 2002 on pluripotency in embryonic stem cells in the lab of Ali H. Brivanlou. He has been leader of a research group at the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin until 2011 focusing his research on signal transduction mechanisms in human and murine embryonic stem cells.

Since 2012 he is managing director of the German Stem Cell Network (GSCN). The GSCN is fostering national and international scientific communications, as well as developing outreach programs for schools and the general public in Germany.

Wendy Bickmore is Director of the MRC Human Genetics Unit, part of the MRC Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine at the University of Edinburgh.  After an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry at Oxford, she obtained her PhD at Edinburgh University.  During postdoctoral training, she became fascinated by the structure and organization of chromosomes in the nucleus and as an independent fellow of the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine (1991-1996) she went on to show that different human chromosomes have preferred positions in the nucleus, related to their gene content. As an MRC group leader she then investigated how individual genes are organized and packaged in the nucleus and how they move in the cell cycle and during development. Current research in Wendy Bickmore’s laboratory focuses on how the spatial organization of the nucleus influences genome function in development and disease. Wendy is an EMBO member and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the Academy of Medical Sciences. She is an editor on many journals including PLoS Genetics and Cell and is the President-Elect of the Genetics Society.

Institute of Reconstrutive Neurobiology, University of Bonn Medical Center

Life & Brain

Oliver Brüstle is a neuropathologist and a renowned expert in stem cell research. Following research activities at the University of Zurich and the NIH in Bethesda, Maryland, he now serves as Professor of Reconstructive Neurobiology at the University of Bonn Medical Center.