Scientific Committee on Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine
Committee Roster
Chair
Teresa V. Bowman, PhD ('26)
Vice Chair
Robert Signer, PhD ('26)
Appointed Members
Anna E Beaudin, PhD ('26)
Grant Anthony Challen, PhD ('28)
Marta Derecka, PhD ('29)
Larry Luchsinger, PhD ('27)
Troy C. Lund, MD, PhD, MS ('28)
Nicki Panoskaltsis, MD, PhD ('26)
Christopher Sturgeon, PhD ('27)
Stephanie Zhi-Juan Xie, PhD ('28)
Staff Liaison
Alice Kuaban, MS
Committee Mandate
The Scientific Committee on Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine is focused on basic and translationally oriented research related to the developmental biology and regenerative potential of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPC) and other cell lineages important for hematopoiesis. The Committee’s interests include how blood and endothelial cells are formed initially in the embryo, how these cells are regulated in homeostatic conditions and in injury or inflammation, and how blood supporting niche cells maintain the blood system during the lifetime of the organism, and how defects in the niches or in the appropriate regulation of blood cell renewal or lineage specification may lead to hematopoietic insufficiencies or malignancies. We are also interested in how stem and progenitor cells of the endothelial, mesenchymal, and osteoblast lineages participate in hematopoietic tissue niche regeneration or repair upon aging, injury, or disease.
Topics of interest to the Scientific Committee on Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine includes: basic, pre-clinical and clinical areas of hematopoietic cell transplantation, mobilization, bone marrow failure, and hematopoietic neoplasia; HSPC-extrinsic factors in hematopoiesis, the methodological aspects of stem and progenitor cell transplant and ex vivo expansion (for multiple cell lineages of the niche), stem cell-based gene transfer and gene correction, differentiation of progenitor cells, and quantification of hematopoietic fate specification; and the emerging areas of in vivo imaging, niche cell biology, and use of induced pluripotent stem cells to model human hematopathology and differentiation of particular hematopoietic and other lineages comprising the niche.
The Scientific Committee on Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine has some overlapping interests with the Committees on Hematopoiesis and Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, and the Committee on Transplantation Biology, but differs in that it is concerned primarily with the very earliest steps in hematopoietic cell specification, with relatively undifferentiated precursor cells within the hematopoietic hierarchy, with the mechanisms by which cell fate specification is balanced among all blood lineages, and with how cells in the hematopoietic niches regulate stem and progenitor cell maintenance and expansion during injury or disease states.
Thus, appropriate sessions at the annual meeting may include:
- Self-renewal and cell fate specification
- Deterministic regulation of stem cell function
- Mechanisms involved in hematopoietic stem cell regeneration
- Relationships between normal and malignant stem cells
- Cellular and molecular components of hematopoietic stem cell niches
- Modeling human blood diseases with pluripotent stem cells
- Specification of HSPC during development
- Age-associated changes in HSPC and the niche cells
- Genetic and epigenetic determinants of blood formation and stemness
- Safe and effective methods for gene delivery and gene correction in hematopoietic stem cells or defined hematopoietic stem/progenitor lineages
- Development and use of pharmacologic agents to modulate the function of normal or malignant stem cells
- Critical analysis of uses of hematopoietic cells or non-hematopoietic lineage niche cells for regenerative medicine of hematopoietic tissues
- Pluripotent stem cell biology (as may be used to understand mechanisms of stem cell self-renewal and differentiation that impact regenerative medicine).
- Direct induction of blood and HSCs from somatic cell
- HSPC-based regenerative therapy for non-hematopoietic disorders