Stem Cells

Christine Mummery is a Professor of Developmental Biology at Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands and head of the Department of Anatomy and Embryology. Her research concerns heart development and the differentiation of pluripotent human stem cells into the cardiac and vascular lineages and using these cells as disease models, for safety pharmacology, drug discovery and future cardiac repair. Immediate interests are on developing biophysical techniques for characterization and functional analysis of cardiovascular cells from hPSC. She was recently awarded a multimillion grant for this purpose and is awardee of a prestigious European Research Council Advanced Grant. A member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Science, and former board member of the International Society of Stem Cell research and the Netherlands Medical Research Council, she's editor in chief of the ISSCR journal Stem Cell Reports and is also on the editorial boards of Cell Stem Cell, Cardiovascular Research and Stem Cells.Anja van de Stolpe is Medical Scientific Advisor and Research Fellow (Senior Director level) at Philips Research. She is by background a registered clinical internist specialized in hematology with 10 years of experience in clinical internal medicine and hemato-oncology / blood coagulation in academic and peripheral hospital settings. A current research interest is innovative molecular diagnostics, especially related to oncology. She is scientifically involved in multiple translational research projects within Philips Research, ranging from circulating tumor cells to sequencing and array-based diagnostics, and oncogenic pathway modelling. She is also actively involved in Business Development, for which she received the Philips Research Entrepreneurs Award. She is cofounder and member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the stem cell company Pluriomics; and a co-founder of the European School for Science Education (ESSE) for post-academic education of medical specialists.Bernard Roelen is Associate professor at the Department of Farm Animal Health, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University in Utrecht, the Netherlands. His research is focused on mammalian germ cells, early embryos stem cells and. He is author of >70 scientific publications.Hans Clevers is obtained his MD degree in 1984 and his PhD degree in 1985 from the University Utrecht, the Netherlands. His postdoctoral work (1986-1989) was done with Cox Terhorst at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute of the Harvard University, Boston, USA. From 1991-2002 Dr. Clevers was Professor in Immunology at the University Utrecht and, since 2002, Professor in Molecular Genetics. Since 2002, he is director of the Hubrecht Institute in Utrecht. He has been a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2000 and is the recipient of several awards, including the Dutch Spinoza Award in 2001, the Swiss Louis Jeantet Prize in 2004, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Katharine Berkan Judd Award in 2005, the Israeli Rabbi Shai Shacknai Memorial Prize in 2006, and the Dutch Josephine Nefkens Prize for Cancer Research and the German Meyenburg Cancer Research Award in 2008.

The second edition of Stem Cells: Scientific Facts and Fiction provides the non-stem cell expert with an understandable review of the history, current state of affairs, and facts and fiction of the promises of stem cells. Building on success of its award-winning preceding edition, the second edition features new chapters on embryonic and iPS cells and stem cells in veterinary science and medicine. It contains major revisions on cancer stem cells to include new culture models, additional interviews with leaders in progenitor cells, engineered eye tissue, and xeno organs from stem cells, as well as new information on "organs on chips" and adult progenitor cells.

In the past decades our understanding of stem cell biology has increased tremendously. Many types of stem cells have been discovered in tissues that everyone presumed were unable to regenerate in adults, the heart and the brain in particular. There is vast interest in stem cells from biologists and clinicians who see the potential for regenerative medicine and future treatments for chronic diseases like Parkinson's, diabetes, and spinal cord lesions, based on the use of stem cells; and from entrepreneurs in biotechnology who expect new commercial applications ranging from drug discovery to transplantation therapies.