Informazioni su EuroStemCell

Andras is member of the Stem Cell Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the Medical Research Council Committee on Human Reproduction and board member of the Hungarian Biotechnology Association. The Molecular Animal Biotechnology Laboratory of the Szent Istvan University, Hungary was established with his appointment as full professor. Furthermore, he is an invited professor at the Veterinary Faculty of Utrecht University, the Netherlands. He has an MBA-level degree in management and years of international experience in project and team management, and creation of industrial spin-offs via his role as co-founder and director of BioTalentum Ltd (www.biotalentum.eu). Prof. Dinnyes is member and advisor in several professional associations and society, and works as editor for the World Journal of Stem Cells and as Senior Editorial Board for the American Journal of Stem Cells. He was rewarded with the Gábor Dennis Innovation Award, Hungary in 2013.

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.

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.

Leiden University Medical Centre

Christine Mummery is Professor and chair of Developmental Biology at Leiden University Medical Centre. She pioneered studies on cardiomyocytes from human embryonic stem cells and was among the first to inject them in mouse heart after myocardial infarction Present interests are on using stem cell derived cardiomyocytes and vascular cells as disease models, for drug discovery.  In 2007, she was a joint Harvard Stem Cell Institute/Radcliffe fellow.  

She presently serves on several Ethical Councils, Scientific Advisory and Editorial Boards and has written a popular book on stem cells. She is also on the board of ISSCR, president of the International Society of Differentiation and an elected  member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Science.

Read our interview with Christine Mummery: A physicist's take on stem cell biology.

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.

Wellcome - MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute

Professor Austin Smith FRS has expertise in the field of pluripotency and has pioneered key advances in the field of embryonic stem cell research. In 2010 he was awarded the prestigious Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine and in 2016 received the International Society for Stem Cell Research Award for Innovation. Austin was the Project Co-ordinator for the original EuroStemCell. You can view a short video describing Austin's research interests and motivations on the Louis-Jeantet Foundation website, and can visit his lab homepage at http://www.stemcells.cam.ac.uk/research/pis/smith

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.

Hans Clevers is Principal Investigator at the Hubrecht Institute for Developmental Biology and Stem Cell Research (KNAW) and the Princess Máxima Center for pediatric oncology and also Professor of Molecular Genetics at the UMC Utrecht and Utrecht University, and Oncode Investigator.

Clevers discovered how the Wnt signaling pathway dictates cell fate decisions during animal embryogenesis by controlling gene expression. Looking beyond embryogenesis, he unveiled the role of Wnt signaling in colon cancer and in its physiological counterpart, the self-renewing gut epithelium. Combining these insights, he described the generic stem cell marker gene Lgr5, which has identified multiple novel adult stem cell types. Against prevailing views, these stem cells could be expanded indefinitely as organoids: mini-organs that recapitulate healthy or diseased human tissue in a dish. Organoids are rapidly gaining ground as research tools in a wide range of scientific disciplines including basic developmental and cell biology, infectiology, toxicology and research on hereditary diseases and cancer.