MADISON, Wis., Aug. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Cellular Dynamics International (CDI) announced today the appointment of Leroy Hood, M.D., Ph.D., and George Church, Ph.D., two of the world's leading scientists in molecular biotechnology and genomics, to the company's scientific advisory board. Hood and Church join stem cell pioneer James Thomson, V.M.D., Ph.D., to advise the company on strategic plans for developing induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells into drug discovery tools and, eventually, personalized therapeutics.
"The commercial opportunity associated with human iPS cells is rapidly becoming complementary and/or competitive with existing markets for small molecule drugs, cord blood banking, embryonic cell research, regulatory genomic predictions, personalized toxicity and efficacy testing, and so on," said Dr. Church. "Significant demand for these cells already exists, and I am impressed with the scale, quality assurance and level of industrialization CDI has achieved and their plans to meet future demand."
"We are excited to welcome Dr. Hood and Dr. Church to CDI's Scientific Advisory Board. Lee and George are recognized as leading pioneers in the rapidly growing field of personalized medicine. Coupling their expertise with Dr. Thomson's provides an added level of scientific vision that will advance the company's goals in the development and delivery of iPS cell-based drug discovery tools and personalized medicine therapies," said Bob Palay, CEO and Chairman of CDI.
Dr. George Church is professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School; director of the Lipper Center for Computational Genetics, DOE Genomes to Life Center, NIH Center for Excellence in Genomic Science, and the Personal Genome Project; as well as member of the Wyss Institute and Broad Institute. He pioneered the first direct genomic sequencing method, which led to the first commercial genome sequence, and to second-generation sequencing -- e.g. open-source Polonator.org. Dr. Church has 34 patents including molecular multiplexing and tags, homologous recombination methods, and DNA array synthesizers. He has advised 24 companies, including founding LS9, JouleBio, and Knome.
Cellular Dynamics International (CDI)
