Biosolutions

James Alexander Thomson (born December 20, 1958, at Oak Park, Illinois, USA) is an American developmental biologist. He serves as director of regenerative biology at the Morgridge Institute for Research in Madison, Wisconsin, and is a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. In 2007, he became an adjunct professor in the Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB) Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara.[ He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In the May 12, 2008, issue of TIME magazine, he was named one of 100 of the most influential people in the world.

In this Frontiers in Cancer Research lecture from UCSB he explores current understanding how human embryonic cells can form any cell in the body and the implications for cancer research.

Group reported the first derivation of embryonic stem (ES) cells from a non-human primate in 1995, work that led us to the first derivation of human ES cells in 1998. Human ES cells are capable of unlimited undifferentiated proliferation, and yet maintain the ability to form all the cells of the body. Much of our early work focused on developing the basic tools (for example, transfection techniques, homologous recombination, and culture conditions) needed to establish human ES cells as a useful experimental model. My group has also been involved in demonstrating the developmental potential of human ES cells in lineage-specific differentiation (such as blood, trophoblast, neural tissue, and heart). Ultimately, the differentiated derivatives of human ES cells could have important applications in transplantation medicine, and we continue some studies of lineage-specific differentiation in collaboration with UW physician scientists.

The current focus of lab is on understanding the ES cell itself. We wish to understand why this cell can form any cell in the body (pluripotency); how an ES cell chooses between self-renewal and the initial decision to differentiate; what determines which developmental transitions are allowed or not-allowed; and how a differentiated cell with limited developmental potential can be reprogrammed to a pluripotent cell.