reGEN Podcast

Dawn Shaw, MSN, NP-C works with our team in the Sanford Stem Cell Institute Alpha Clinic, supporting patients in active clinical trials and ongoing follow-up treatment and monitoring. Dawn shares her perspective on stem cell and regenerative medicine from the patient point of view, discussing the holistic philosophy of patient-centric health care in our Clinical Center.

Hosted by Bobby Gordon, MA, MBA

This episode was recorded on July 30, 2025, and information presented is accurate as of the time of this recording.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/rK4D9_MeUhs

Mark Walters, MD, is the Jordan Family Director of Bone Marrow Transplantation at the UC San Francisco Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland and serves as the program director of the UCSF CIRM Alpha Clinic. He has been the director of stem cell therapy and a division leader since 1999. Walters is a hematologist-oncologist who cares for children with blood disorders and cancer and specializes in blood and bone marrow transplants.

Walters' research focuses on transplant and gene therapy for sickle cell disease and thalassemia – which are both red blood cell disorders that involve abnormalities of hemoglobin; the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen. His goal is to offer a curative therapy to every child he treats. Because finding a healthy donor for sickle cell disease can be difficult, he also investigates methods that aim to correct the patient's own blood system through gene therapy and return the edited blood cells to the patient's circulation.

Hosted by Bobby Gordon, MA, MBA

This episode was recorded on Oct. 17, 2025, and all information presented is current as of this date.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/DR5CSEhJPps

This episode of the reGEN Podcast features United States Space Force veteran David Beck, MBA, and his journey from government and national security roles to serving as a patient advocate and cancer survivor. With over 30 years of experience in the industry, Beck leads Space Technology Ltd., an innovative company operating at the intersection of national security and commercial innovation in the evolving global space economy. Beck's dedication to the global space industry reflects his commitment to innovation, strategic collaboration and advancing the future of space through meaningful industry connections and emerging technologies.

Hosted by Bobby Gordon, MA, MBA

This episode was recorded on Oct. 17, 2025, and information presented herein is current at the time of recording.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/TBXHlHq-PnY

Professor Andreas Trumpp, PhD, discusses his innovative and breakthrough findings from stem cells in leukemia to neuronal interactions in pancreatic cancer. Since 2008, Trumpp has led the Stem Cells and Cancer division at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ). In 2008, he became the founding director of the Stem Cell Institute HI-STEM. He is also the coordinator of the Research Program A, Cell and Tumor Biology at the DKFZ and co-director of the DKFZ-ZMBH Alliance.

Trumpp's lab explores the principles of normal and malignant stem cell function, as well as mechanisms of therapy resistance at the molecular, genomic, metabolic, and single-cell levels. His team focusses on AML, breast- and pancreatic cancers aiming to identify and overcome resistance mechanisms within a personalized and precision oncology framework.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/09XYnFznjyw

Hosted by Bobby Gordon, MA, MBA

This episode was recorded on Oct. 17, 2025 and all information presented is current as of this date.

Our conversation with Arun Sharma, PhD, discusses his work as a stem cell biologist, focusing on cardiovascular biology and space biosciences. He is an associate professor at Cedars-Sinai and is affiliated with the Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute, the Smidt Heart Institute and the Cancer Institute and the Department of Biomedical Sciences. He is the director of the Center for Space Medicine Research and the director of the CIRM (California Institute for Regenerative Medicine) Shared Resources Laboratory at Cedars-Sinai. Sharma also co-hosts The Stem Cell Podcast.

Research in the Sharma laboratory focuses on the applications of human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) for modeling cardiovascular diseases outside of the body (in-vitro). The lab utilizes cutting-edge technologies including hiPSCs, genome editing, cardiac organ-on-chips and 3D cardiac spheroids/organoids to understand the molecular mechanisms driving cardiovascular disease and heart development. In 2016, Sharma led a project that sent human stem cell-derived heart cells to the International Space Station (ISS) to study the effects of microgravity on human heart function, which was the first long-duration cell culture experiment in space.

Hosted by Bobby Gordon, MA, MBA

This episode was recorded on Oct. 17, 2025, and information presented herein is current at the time of recording.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/OShNKaFfJfc

This episode of the reGEN Podcast features our conversation with Jennifer Graves, MD, PhD, who serves as a clinical professor of neurosciences and as a clinical trial expert with the Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center Alpha Clinic at UC San Diego. Her work includes a focus on Multiple Sclerosis and emerging therapeutic applications for this and other neurological conditions with stem cells and regenerative medicine. Graves oversees active clinical trials at the UC San Diego Alpha Clinic for MS and is a prolific published researcher.

Hosted by Bobby Gordon, MA, MBA

This episode was recorded on Aug. 18, 2025, and information presented herein is current at the time of recording.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/GoTI9QZ-V-U

This episode features Sheldon Morris, MD, MPH, and an overview of the Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center where Morris serves as director. The Clinical Center at UC San Diego encompasses a wide scope of services and outreach, including the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) Alpha Clinic, clinical trials, community engagement, CIRM grant application assistance and management. We discuss the importance of the collaborative nature of the Clinical Center partnering with trial experts from UC San Diego Health, industry leaders and other researchers for novel discoveries and therapeutics related to stem cells, regenerative medicine and gene therapies.

Hosted by Bobby Gordon, MA, MBA

This episode was recorded on April 7, 2025, and information presented is current as of the date of this recording.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/5E_YA0-PKm8

This episode features our conversation with Jonathan Thomas, PhD, JD, President and CEO of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). Thomas was previously the chair of the CIRM governing board from June 2011 to March 2023 and has played an integral role in supporting patient-centric research, strategies and outcomes within the Alpha Clinic network and UC San Diego's Sanford Stem Cell Institute. We discuss his history with CIRM and the impact the organization has had across California.

Thomas has a long-standing commitment to patient advocacy. He spent more than 15 years on the board of the Crippled Children's Society of Southern California and served as chair for four years. The organization, now called AbilityFirst, assists children with spinal cord injuries and mental disabilities that could be targets of stem cell therapies.

Hosted by Bobby Gordon, MA, MBA

This episode was recorded on Oct. 17, 2025, and information presented herein is current at the time of recording.

Our conversation with Tannishtha Reya, PhD, reviews her work and publications on understanding the mechanisms that drive cancer initiation, progression, and therapy resistance. Her research also includes developing high resolution in vivo imaging approaches to map normal stem cell behavior and interactions within a living organism, to define how these change during cancer formation.

Tannishtha is the associate director for Translational Research and director of the Irving Drug Discovery Program at Columbia's Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center. She is also a former professor with the UC San Diego School of Medicine. An expert in how stem cells fuel cancer growth, she is known for co-authoring a publication in Nature in 2001 that coined the term 'cancer stem cell' to describe how some cancer cells can mirror the properties of stem cells in normal tissues. Reya's laboratory has uncovered critical pathways and therapeutic targets in leukemia and pancreatic cancer, contributing to clinical trials and approvals for new therapies. She has been recognized for her contributions to the field with many prestigious awards, including an NIH Director's Pioneer Award and an NCI Outstanding Investigator Award.

Hosted by Bobby Gordon, MA, MBA

This episode was recorded on Oct. 16, 2025, and information is current as of the time of this recording.

Our conversation with Leo D. Wang, MD, PhD, includes unique insights into novel discoveries and therapeutics for HIV, diabetes, cancer and other conditions. As the director of the City of Hope Alpha Clinic, we discuss the innovative and collaborative nature of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) Alpha Clinic network. The City of Hope was the first of now nine CIRM Alpha Clinics, designed to improve patient access to stem cell and regenerative medicine clinical trials for all Californians.

Leo Wang also serves as an associate professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Immuno-Oncology, and the division chief of cell, gene, and transplantation therapy at City of Hope, a cancer hospital located outside of Los Angeles, CA, with additional affiliate locations. He leads a research lab dedicated to reprogramming the immune system to fight childhood cancers, where his team works to modify the body's own immune cells to target and destroy cancer cells. Additionally, his lab studies how these engineered cellular therapies interact with tumors and the native immune system. Wang also oversees clinical trials that use these "living medicines" to treat pediatric brain tumors and other aggressive cancers.

Hosted by Bobby Gordon, MA, MBA

This episode was recorded on Oct. 17, 2025, and information is current as of the time of this recording.