ipsc
(4)
John Lu
Shi-Jiang (John) Lu is a stem cell scientist and the founder, President and CEO of HebeCell Corp, a Natick, Massachusetts biotech building off-the-shelf cancer-killing immune cells from pluripotent stem cells. He spent two decades in regenerative medicine, was a top-ranked inventor in the global stem cell patent landscape, and led research at Advanced Cell Technology before that company was absorbed by Astellas. At HebeCell he pioneered a 3D, feeder-free bioreactor process for growing iPSC-derived natural killer (NK) and CAR-NK cells at industrial scale - aiming to make potent immune therapies as standardized and reproducible as a manufactured product.
Koji Tanabe
Koji Tanabe is the founder and CEO of I Peace, Inc., a Palo Alto and Kyoto biotech building an automated platform to mass-manufacture clinical-grade induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). He earned his PhD in the Kyoto University lab of Nobel laureate Shinya Yamanaka and was a co-author of the landmark paper that first reported the creation of human iPS cells. After postdoctoral work at Stanford, he founded I Peace in 2015 with the goal of giving every person access to their own stem cells for therapy and longevity.
Nicholas Geisse
Nicholas Geisse is the CEO of Curi Bio, a Seattle biotech building human-relevant tissue platforms that make lab-grown muscle and heart cells behave more like the real thing. A Cambridge-trained pharmacologist who learned to wire up tiny instruments in Kevin Kit Parker's cardiac engineering lab at Harvard, he spent years at Asylum Research selling and designing atomic force microscopes before joining Curi Bio as Chief Science Officer in 2017. He led development of the Mantarray 3D engineered-muscle-tissue platform and the company's NIH-backed R&D program, then stepped up to chief executive in 2023. His work has collected an Xconomy 'Big Idea' award, an SBA Tibbetts award, and an Edison Award.
Vincent Ling
Vincent Ling is the Chief Business Officer of Morphocell Technologies, a Laval-based regenerative medicine company building iPSC-derived engineered tissues to treat severe organ dysfunction, starting with liver disease. A biotech and pharma veteran of three decades, he spent 12 years at Takeda's Center for External Innovation, where he identified and backed the Kariko-Weissman mRNA platform out of the University of Pennsylvania - the science that became the first COVID mRNA vaccines and earned the 2023 Nobel Prize. He has held leadership roles at Genetics Institute, Adnexus Therapeutics, and Neurotech Pharmaceuticals, and advises the Gates Foundation and academic institutions.