STEM CELL ADVISORS
Advisory Board
David Adamson, MD, is a Board Certified specialist in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility and Obstetrics and Gynecology. He is Director of Fertility Physicians of Northern California and the Fertility and Reproductive Health Institute, a Clinical Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, and Associate Clinical Professor at U.C. San Francisco School of Medicine. Dr. Adamson has published widely and is an internationally recognized expert on IVF, reproductive surgery and endometriosis. He has served as President of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, and the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, and on committees at the Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, and Centers for Disease Control. Recognized by Good Housekeeping Magazine as one of the best 400 physicians for women in America, he received the 2006 Outstanding Achievement in Medicine award from the Santa Clara County Medical Society.
Arthur L. Caplan, PhD, is the Emmanuel and Robert Hart Professor of Bioethics and the Director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Dr. Caplan is the author or editor of twenty-nine books and over 500 papers in refereed journals. Dr. Caplan's research interests span transplantation research general bioethics, genetics, reproductive technologies, and health policy. His national and international committee memberships include the Chair of the Advisory Committee to the United Nations on Human Cloning and the American Society of Gene Therapy. His most recent books are Smart Mice Not So Smart People (Rowman Littlefield, 2006) and the Penn Guide to Bioethics (Springer, 2009). He writes a regular column on bioethics for MSNBC.com and is a frequent guest and commentator on various media outlets.
Arlene Y. Chiu, PhD, is director of the Office of New Research Initiatives at the Beckman Research Institute of the City of Hope (BRICOH). She served as Director of Scientific Activities at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) and later as Interim Chief Scientific Officer. At CIRM, she helped design, develop and implement the institute's grants program and its Scientific Strategic Plan. While on the faculty at BRICOH, her research focused on development and diseases afflicting motor neurons. Dr. Chiu has held senior positions at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), first as program director for Spinal Cord Injury, and Stem Cell Research at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and then as associate director at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. In 2004, she received the NIH Director's Award for her contributions to stem cell research.
Margaret Eaton, JD, PharmD, teaches at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business in biotechnology and pharmaceutical business ethics, medical law, and biomedical ethics. Her academic work focuses on the ethical and social issues that impact the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. She has published business school case studies and two books: Ethics and the Business of Bioscience, and (with co-authors) BioIndustry Ethics. With Donald Kennedy, she authored Innovation in Medical Technology: Ethical Issues and Challenges. She has held faculty positions at the University of Minnesota School of Pharmacy and Stanford University. She has held positions at Genentech, Inc., Sedgwick, Detert, Moran amp;amp; Arnold LLP, and Stanford University Office of General Counsel. Dr Eaton was co-chair of the Stanford Hospital ethics committee and was Senior Research Scholar in the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics.
Fred H. Gage, PhD, is a professor in the Laboratory of Genetics at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Pioneering research in his laboratory has toppled a long-held dogma to show that human beings are capable of growing new nerve cells throughout life. His current research studies this self-renewing process to replace or augment brain and spinal cord tissues lost or damaged due to neurodegenerative disease or trauma. Dr. Gage is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Science and a Fellow of the Academy's prestigious Institute of Medicine. His awards include the Max Plank Research Prize, the Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievements in Health and Education, and he was honored as one of the Top 100 Innovators of the Century by TIME Magazine for his findings on plasticity and adaptability of the adult central nervous system.
Zach W. Hall, PhD, was the first president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), the California state agency set up under Proposition 71 to fund stem cell research. In 1994-97, he was director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at NIH and afterwards, Executive Vice Chancellor at the University of California, San Francisco. He has been a Senior Associate Dean for Research at the Keck School of Medicine at USC and served for one year as President and CEO of EnVivo Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a start-up biotechnology company. Dr. Hall, a neuroscientist, has made fundamental contributions to investigation of the molecular structure and development of the neuromuscular junction. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine and has received the Purkynje Medal from the Czech Academy of Sciences.
Katie Hood is Chief Executive Officer of The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research (MJFF). She has played critical roles in shaping MJFF's strategy of intervening aggressively to close critical gaps that slow potential treatments on their path from the laboratory to Parkinson's patients, as well as in building a team of in-house research experts needed to implement that strategy. Today the Foundation stands as the single largest Parkinson's research funder in the world outside the U.S. government. Ms. Hood is a member of the Advisory Council to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and the director of NINDS on research funding prioritization and related matters for neurological diseases. She also is a member of the Board of Directors of the Parkinson's Action Network (PAN).
Arnold Kriegstein, MD, PhD, is Director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the Program in Developmental and Stem Cell Biology and a Professor of Neurology at the University of California San Francisco. Formerly he worked as a professor of Neurology at the College of Physicians amp; Surgeon at Columbia University, Yale University, and Stanford University from 1981-2001. Dr. Kriegstein focuses his research primarily on the process by which neurons are born and migrate to the cortex, an issue of fundamental importance to a wide range of neurodevelopmental disorders, including schizophrenia, epilepsy, and learning disabilities. He has received several awards, such as a Stanford University William M. Hume Faculty Scholar, the NIH Javitts Award.
Alan J. Lewis, PhD, joined the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) as President and Chief Executive Officer in January 2009. JDRF is a leader in setting the agenda for diabetes research worldwide, and is the largest charitable funder and advocate of type 1 research. Prior to joining JDRF, Dr. Lewis was President, Chief Executive Officer, and Director of Novocell, Inc., a stem cell engineering company. Previously, Dr. Lewis served as CEO and Director of Signal Pharmaceuticals and was Vice President of Research at Wyeth-Ayerst, where he led research efforts in diabetes, CNS, cardiovascular, inflammatory, allergy, and bone metabolism diseases. Dr. Lewis serves as a Director of BioMarin Pharmaceutical, Inc., Cytochroma, Inc., BIOCOM, and the Scottish Stem Cell Network. He is an Honorary Fellow and Chair of the Life Sciences Department at the University of Wales in Swansea, U.K.
Jonathan Moreno, PhD, is the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor of Ethics and Professor of Medical Ethics and of History and Sociology of Science and at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Moreno is Visiting Professor of Biomedical Ethics at the University of Virginia, an elected member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies, and a National Associate of the National Research Council. He is a Faculty Affiliate of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, Fellow of the Hastings Center and the New York Academy of Medicine, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, Washington, DC, and founding editor of Science Progress. Dr. Moreno was on the Obama administration's transition team and is an author of many publications and books including Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense (2006) and Science Next: Innovation for the Common Good (2009).
Theo D. Palmer, PhD, is an Associate Professor with tenure at Stanford University and member of the Stanford Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and the Stanford Institute for Neuro-Innovation and Translational Neurosciences. Dr. Palmer's biomedical research in the neurosciences focuses on neural stem cell biology and stem cell therapy for neurological disorders. His broad experience in the use of embryonic and adult human stem cells in neural stem cell transplantation provides The Stem Cell Advisors with excellent support for assessment and consulting in human stem cell modeling and early clinical applications for neurological injury or disease. Dr. Palmer has also played a central role in the establishment of the Stanford University Stem Cell Research Oversight Panel and brings critical insights on institutional compliance methods that meet the needs of the researcher as well as the rapidly evolving regulatory oversight requirements within the research disciplines of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine.
The Honorable Kay Patterson, PhD, was elected to the Australian Senate in 1987, and held a number of government executive positions including Minister of Health, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and the Minister for Foreign Affairs. In 2002 Dr. Patterson took legislation through the Senate, which permitted, within very strict parameters, the creation of stem cell lines from donated embryos excess to IVF requirements. In 2006, she wrote a private member's bill that passed into law to extending embryonic stem cell research to include somatic cell nuclear transfer. Formerly she taught at Sydney and Monash Universities and held senior academic positions including Chairman of the School of Behavioural Sciences at the Lincoln Institute (now at Latrobe University). Dr. Patterson is a Vice Chancellor's Professorial Fellow at Monash University, and a board member of the Brockhoff Foundation.
Irving L. Weissman, MD, is Director of the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, and Director of the Stanford Ludwig Center for Stem Cell Research. Dr. Weissman's studies the biology of stem cells and progenitor cells, mainly blood-and brain-forming. His group is isolating and characterizing rare cancer and leukemia stem cells as the only dangerous cells in these malignancies. He was first to identify and isolate the blood-forming stem cell from mice, and co-discovered the human hematopoietic stem cell and a human neural stem cell. He was a member of the founding advisory boards of Amgen, DNAX, and T-Cell Sciences. He co-founded SyStemix, StemCells, and Celtrans (now Cellerant). Professor Weissman is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the American Association of Arts and Sciences. He has authored over 650 peer-reviewed papers.
Officers and Management
David Magnus, PhD, is Director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Stanford University. He has over 100 publications on a wide range of topics in bioethics, particularly in the areas of genetics and stem cell research. He is the principle editor of Who Owns Life? a collection of essays on ownership, control and patenting of genes, tissues and organisms. He has served as a consultant to the National Conference of State Legislators on Cloning and serves as a member of the California Human Stem Cell Research Advisory Committee. He has published in Science, Nature Biotechnology, the American Journal of Human Genetics, and the British Medical Journal. He serves as co-editor of the American Journal of Bioethics, the highest impact factor journal in the field of bioethics. He was recently elected Vice President (and President-Elect) of the Association of Bioethics Program Directors.
Kathryn Melsop is General Manager for The Stem Cell Advisors, Inc. and is a program manager in the Department of Pediatrics and Neonatology for the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative (CMQCC) working on evidence-based quality improvement in maternal healthcare. Kathryn has worked at Stanford University for the past 13 years as a clinical trial project manager in the Department of Health Research and Policy, Divisions of Epidemiology and Health Services Research and as the manager of Stanford's stem cell research oversight (SCRO) committee.
Renee A. Reijo-Pera, PhD, is professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Stanford University and Director of the Center for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research and Education. Her research is aimed at understanding the genetics of human embryo growth and development, and in characterizing the basic properties of human embryonic stem cells, especially their ability to generate pluripotent stem cells, somatic cells and germ cells. Her early work resulted in identification of one of the first genes specifically implicated in human germ cell development. Dr. Reijo-Pera has received numerous awards throughout her career and was cited as one of America's twenty most influential women by Newsweek magazine. Before coming to Stanford, Dr. Reijo-Pera was the co-director of the Program in Human Stem Cell Biology at the University of California, San Francisco.
Christopher Thomas Scott is Director of the Stanford University Program on Stem Cells in Society, a senior research scholar in the Center for Biomedical Ethics, and an associate fellow at King's College and the University of Sheffield. His research focuses on the social, economic, political, and ethical dimensions of regenerative medicine. He has authored over 70 publications and refereed papers. His book, Stem Cell Now (2007) has been translated into five languages. Mr. Scott was the former Assistant Vice Chancellor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and held several senior positions at Stanford. He was a co-founder of Acumen Sciences, and a founding editor of the award-winning Acumen Journal of Sciences. He is regularly featured in national and international media coverage of bioethics and stem cell research.
Ken Taymor, JD, is Executive Director of the Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy at UC Berkeley School of Law. As a legal and business advisor, he provided guidance to life science companies, university technology licensing offices and researchers in financial and strategic planning, intellectual property licensing and translating research into commercial products. He has researched and written on the intersection of ethical, political, legal and scientific issues arising from human stem cell research and commercialization. Mr. Taymor was a lecturer at the Stanford Law School and the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a visiting professor at UCLA Law School. Mr. Taymor graduated from Yale Law School in 1982 and received his A.B. from Princeton University in 1974.