Dr. Anthony Atala is the Founding Director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the Chair of Urology at the Wake Forest School of Medicine. His team developed the first lab-grown organ to be implanted into a human and he currently oversees a team of over 400 researchers who are working to develop cell therapies and engineer replacement organs and tissues.

Generating Gametes from PSCs – Researchers generated functional mouse oocytes from PSCs that could be fertilized and result in viable offspring.

Dicer for Protection from RNA Viruses – An alternatively spliced isoform of the enzyme Dicer, called aviD, protects mammalian stem cells from RNA viruses through RNA interference.

Mechanical Forces in Engineered Heart Tissues – Scientists generated engineered heart tissue systems with dynamic loading to model diseases such as arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy.

Drug Screening for Pulmonary Hypertension – Researchers used transcriptomics and iPSC-derived endothelial cells from pulmonary hypertension patients to identify a tyrosine kinase inhibitor that improved vascular function in a rat model.

Photo Reference: Courtesy of Dr. Anthony Atala

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