CONCURRENT SESSIONS

Concurrent Track: Clinical Applications

Highlighting the cellular therapy and tissue engineering research that is moving toward the clinic; examining manufacturing and upscaling and presenting clinical trial updates.

Emerging New Therapies

Ganna Bilousova, PhD, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, USA
Ludovic Vallier, PhD, Berlin Institute of Health at Charite, Germany
Jacqueline Bliley, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Holly Voges, PhD, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Australia
Tatsuma Kondo, MD, Nagoya University, Japan
Shulin Li, PhD, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, USA

  • Therapies spanning a range of modalities, including in-situ / direct reprogramming, direct gene editing, and gene-edited cell therapies will be highlighted in this session.

PSC-Based Cell Therapies

Sponsored by: Bayer | BlueRock Therapeutics

Tamar Harel Adar, MD, Matricelf, Israel
Felicia Pagliuca, PhD, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, USA
Ian Hay, Factor Bioscience Inc., USA
Yoshiki Furukawa, Juntendo University School of Medicine, Japan
Edoardo Sozzi, Lund University, Sweden
Anne Plant, PhD, National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA

  • Emerging embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cell therapies for a range of indications will be showcased in this session.

Gene Therapies

Dimitri Kullmann, PhD, Institute of Neurology, UCL, UK
Benedikt Berninger, PhD, King's College London, UK
Michela Milani, PhD, IRCCS San Raffaele Hospital, Italy
Carine Bourdais, PhD, Université de Montpellier, INSERM, CHU Montpellier, France
Thomas Berger, PhD, Catalent Cell & Gene Therapy, Germany
Alessandra Ricca, PhD, San Raffaele Hospital, Italy

  • This session will focus on emerging new areas of gene therapy, in the clinic, or advancing towards the clinic.

Updates on Clinical Trials

Viviane Tabar, MD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, USA
Lisa Ott de Bruin MD, PhD, Leiden University Medical Centre, Netherlands
Ruchi, Sharma, NEI/NIH, USA

  • This session will provide ahigh-level overview of regenerative medicine efforts by institution and/or organ.

Concurrent track: Disease Modeling and Drug Discovery

Examining advances using stem cells in vivo and in vitro to model development and disease with applications for drug discovery and therapeutics.

Stem Cells for Personalized Medicine

Jeffrey Beekman, PhD, University Medical Center Utrecht, Netherlands
Eva van Rooij, PhD, Hubrecht Institute, Netherlands
Nathalie Saurat, PhD, MSKCC, USA
Abel Vertesy, IMBA - Institute of Molecular Biotechnology Austria, Austria
Aman George, PhD, National Institutes of Health, USA
Tianyuan Shi, PhD, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

  • This session will explore how the generation of stem cell models from patients with genetic diseases has increasingly improved to the extent that they can now predict disease phenotypes and even be used for drug discovery to correct the condition.

The Use of Stem Cells in Disease Modeling II

Guo-li Ming, MD, PhD, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Ryuji Morizane, MD, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital, USA
Giovanni, Pietrogrande, PhD, The University of Queensland, Australia
Carmen Menacho, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany
Joel Blanchard, PhD, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, USA
Jubao Duan, University of Chicago/NorthShore University HelathSystem, USA

  • Many stem cell models now exist for multiple genetic diseases. They are increasingly used for finding therapeutics. Examples of how stem cell models are being used for drug discovery will be shown in this session.

Advancing in vitro Models

Enzo Porrello, PhD, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, Australia
Meritxell Huch, PhD, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology & Genetics, Germany
Helmuth Gehart, PhD, ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Deepali Pal PhD, University of Bristol, UK
Shalaka Chitale PhD, CytoTronics Inc., USA
Esther Fousert, Leiden University Medical Center, Netherlands

  • Disease models have been under development for a number of years, but recent advances in technology, from readouts to complexity of tissue types included, have increasingly improved capture of normal physiology and disease. Recent advances in this space will be presented.

The Use of Stem Cells in Disease Modeling I

Sponsored by: bit.bio

Gabsang Lee, PhD, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, USA
Sonia Gandhi, PhD, Francis Crick Institute and University College London, UK
Sara Nolbrant, PhD, University of California, San Francisco, USA
Heein Song, Leiden University Medical Center, Netherlands
Meiyan Wang, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, USA
Alberto Camacho Magallanes, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, Canada

  • Stem cells can be derived from patients with many diseases and used as platforms for understanding molecular mechanisms underlying disease with a view to developing therapies.

Concurrent track: new technologies

Exploring the application of emerging technologies to stem cell research.

Integrative Single Cell Omics

Goncalo Castelo-Branco, PhD, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden
Barbara Treutlein, PhD, ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Enes Ugur, PhD, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Germany
Christopher Esk PhD, University of Innsbruck, Austria
Marieke Van Leeuwen Erasmus, MC, Netherlands
Indranil Singh MSc, IRB Barcelona - Institute for Research in Biomedicine, Spain

  • Understanding stem cell systems is challenging due to their cellular heterogeneity. Advanced single-cell technologies now allow for multi-layered deep molecular characterization and insights into individual cell behaviors. This session will discuss these recent methodological advancements and their impact on stem cell research.

Engineering approaches to developmental and Stem Cell Biology

Miki Ebisuya, PhD, TU Dresden, Germany
Ron Weiss, PhD, MIT, USA
Sveva Bottini, University of Torino, Italy
Suzan Stelloo, RIMLS, Radboud University, Netherlands
Connor Fausto, University of Southern California, USA
Jianping Fu, PhD, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA

  • Stem cells sense their environment, process information, and continuously react to stimuli to self-renew or differentiate. In this session, speakers will cover the construction of synthetic gene networks as well as new models of human developmental mechanisms to improve our understanding of stem cell regulatory networks. 

Imaging Stem Cell Systems Across Scales

Bernd Bodenmiller, PhD, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Kate McDole, PhD, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, UK
Duncan Chadly, Caltech, USA
Daniel Postrach, German Cancer Research Center, Germany
Ramon Pfaendler, ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Laura Fischer, Washington University in St. Louis, USA

  • This concurrent session will visualize how molecules and stem cells organize to build tissues and form organs, which is essential to capture mechanisms underlying normal physiology and disease. This session will cover examples on imaging approaches to map stem cells and watch development as it unfolds.

Novel Approaches to Program and Perturb Cell Fate

Filipe Pereira, PhD, Lund University, Sweden
Baris Tursun, PhD, University of Hamburg, Germany
Matias Autio, PhD, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star), Singapore
Camila Vazquez Echegaray, PhD, Lund University, Sweden
Stepan Jerabek, PhD, Columbia University, USA
Gal Keshet, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

  • This session on new technologies is being harnessed to precisely engineer the identity of clinically valuable human cells. The cross-disciplinary selection of speakers spans the fields of cell fate engineering and emerging technologies aiming to manipulate cells with high efficiency and fidelity. 

Concurrent Track: Pluripotency and Development

Understanding pluripotency and lineage commitment; exploring embryo and organ development.

Integrated Stem Cell Models of Early Embryo Development

Aydan Bulut-Karslioglu, PhD, Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, Germany
Sophie Petropoulos, PhD, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden and University of Montreal, Canada
Bernardo Oldak, MD, MSc, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Raquel Fueyo, Stanford University, USA
Karlien Van Nerum, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Anchel de Jaime-Soguero, PhD, Heidelberg University, Germany

  • Embryo models formed from stem cells open a scientifically and ethically conducive path for embryology. Here, speakers will focus on ‘Integrated Embryo Models’ that contain the relevant embryonic and extraembryonic cell types that could support a capacity for further integrated development.

TISSUE AND ORGAN DEVELOPMENT

Anne Grapin-Botton, PhD, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Germany
Shahragim Tajbakhsh, PhD, Pasteur Institute, France
Wolfram Goessling MD, PhD, Harvard Medical School/Mass General Hospital, USA
Juan Alvarez, PhD, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Julia Batki, PhD, Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, Germany
Yanbo Yin, University of Cambridge, UK

  • This session will explore topics of tissue and organ development primarily through the lens of developmental studies in organisms.

Non-integrated Stem Cell Models of Early Embryo Development

Yasuhiro Takashima, MD, PhD, CIRA and Kyoto University, Japan
Mo Ebrahimkhani, MD, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Auriana Arabpour, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Madeleine Linneberg-Agerholm, Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Medicine (reNEW), Denmark
Yung Su Kim, PhD, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA
Jin Zhang, PhD, Zhejiang University, China

  • Embryo models formed from stem cells open a scientifically and ethically conducive path for embryology. Here, speakers will focus on ‘Non-Integrated Embryo Models’ that mimic only certain tissues of human embryo development, often lack extra-embryonic membranes, and manifest the ability to form connected embryonic tissues and organs.

TOTIPOTENCY AND GERM CELL DEVELOPMENT

Miguel Esteban, PhD, Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, China
Katsuhiko Hayashi, PhD, Kyushu University, Japan
Sergiy Velychko, PhD, Harvard Medical School, USA
Maria Rostovskaya, PhD, Babraham Institute, UK
Moyra Lawrence, PhD, Kyoto University, Japan
Miguel Ramalho-Santos, PhD, MSc, Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute and University of Toronto, Canada

  • Capturing stem cells in a particular state that reflects a lineage and stage is a major endeavor at the base of stem cell biology. In this session, speakers will focus on recent advances in the derivation of totipotent stem cells and recapitulation of germ cell development in the dish.

Concurrent Track: Somatic Stem Cells, Cancer and Regeneration

Exploring somatic stem cell homeostasis and ageing, regeneration, stem cell-niche interactions, and stem cells in cancer.

Cellular Plasticity in Regeneration and Cancer

Elisa Laurenti, PhD, University of Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, UK
Peter Reddien, PhD, Whitehead Institute, MIT, USA
Sandra Gomez Lopez, University College London, UK
Anupama Hemalatha, PhD, Yale School of Medicine, USA
Mark Schmitt, PhD, Erasmus University Medical Center, Netherlands
Swarnabh Bhattacharya, PhD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School, USA

  • Cell fate transitions, once thought to be irrevocable, are now known to frequently exhibit plasticity. Remarkably, even some terminally differentiated cells can regain the capacity to self-renew when challenged. This session will explore the nature of plasticity in cell fate decisions, pinpoint the contexts in which plasticity is invoked, and dissect its molecular and signaling basis.

Mechanobiology of Stem Cells and Tissues

Sirio Dupont, PhD, University of Padova, Italy
Eugenia Piddini, PhD, University of Bristol, UK
Pamela Wenzel, PhD, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, USA
Clementine Villeneuve, PhD, Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine, Germany
Giulia Savorè, MD, University of Torino, Italy
Qiaoling Zhu, PhD, Tongji University, China

  • This session will examine how mechanical forces direct behaviors of stem cells and define physiological properties of their resident tissues. We will explore the molecular basis of force sensing and force generation, explore how forces are transduced into biochemical signals, and discuss how altered forces promote stem cell pathologies.

Aging and Metabolic Regulation of Tissue Stem Cells

Salvador Aznar Benitah, PhD, IRBB, Spain
Kyoko Miura, PhD, Kumamoto University, Japan
Silvia Sighinolfi, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Italy
Rui Yue, PhD, Tongji University, China
Jonathan Bayerl, PhD, University of California, San Francisco, USA
Elisa Gabassi, University of Innsbruck, Austria

  • Aging and metabolism exert profound, intertwined effects on stem cell dynamics in vivo. This session will explore the molecular mechanisms that underpin these broad-ranging impacts and define their cellular consequences.

Maintenance and Regeneration of Tissue Architecture

Bon-Kyoung Koo, PhD, Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA), Austria and Center for Genome Engineering, Institute for Basic Science, Korea
Kenneth D. Poss, PhD, Duke University Medical Center, USA
Matthew Tierney, PhD, The Rockefeller University, USA
Shicong Xie, Stanford University, USA
Kerstin Bartscherer, Osnabrueck University, Germany
Hugo Vankelecom, PhD, KU Leuven, Belgium

  • This session will explore the dynamic interplay between stem cells, their progeny, and niche cells in maintaining and repairing tissue architecture. Healthy organs require continual upkeep of tissue composition and form during maturity and robust regeneration after injury. We will delve into new and emerging mechanisms that underpin the physiological maintenance and repair of tissue architecture throughout our lifetimes.

Concurrent track: Ethics, Policy & STANDARDS

The ISSCR standing committees representing these three areas integral to stem cell research and regenerative medicine will each design a session for the annual meeting program to be held during the concurrent track sessions in the program.

Identifying the Ethical Complexities and Governance Implications for Embryo Model Research 

Sponsored by: Burroughs Wellcome Fund
Soren Holm, PhD, The University of Manchester, UK
Rosario Isasi, JD, MPH, The University of Miami, USA
Sandy Starr, Progress Educational Trust (PET), UK
Hongmei Wang, PhD, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

  • Research with stem cell-based embryo models has opened new avenues for studying embryogenesis and its implications to understanding human disorders and diseases. However, the science is advancing so rapidly that jurisdictions around the world are struggling with the evolving ethical complexities and boundaries of exploration. This session pulls together experts grappling with the implications of these developments to help us understand the scientific landscape and formulate coherent regulations based on robust ethical and governance discussions around the globe.

EQUITY, DIVERSITY, AND INCLUSION IN THE DISH

Raeka Aiyar, PhD, The New York Stem Cell Foundation, USA
Brian Aguado, PhD, University of California, San Diego, USA
Magdalena Kasendra, PhD, Center for Stem Cell & Organoid Medicine (CuSTOM) at Cincinnati Children’s USA
Ralda Nehme, PhD, Broad Insitute of Harvard and MIT, USA

  • Stem cells offer significant potential to unravel disease mechanisms, inform novel medicines, and develop innovative cell therapies for challenging medical conditions. However, there is a growing appreciation that a “one size fits all” approach to research and therapies is not applicable to all individuals. Biases in stem cell sourcing have exacerbated disparities in our understanding of how genetic ancestry impacts stem cell phenotypes. Specifically, genetic background is rarely considered as a biological variable for in vitro disease models, despite the significant influence that biological variables such as sex or ancestry have on overall cell phenotypes, including maintenance of pluripotency, differentiation tendencies, and responses to developmental signals. The primary objective of this session is to highlight current practices for diversifying biological samples in the lab and leveraging diversity in stem cell research. This session will also define plans to improve the accessibility of stem cell therapies through financial considerations, global access, and policy/ethics considerations.

Use of Standards for Stem Cells in Non-Clinical Research

Co-organized by: Joint Research Centre (JRC), European Commission
Christine L. Mummery, PhD, Leiden University Medical Center, Netherlands
Martin F. Pera, PhD, The Jackson Laboratory, USA

Abstract-Selected Speakers TBA

  • Stem cell-based models are of special interest for pre-clinical studies and chemical safety assessment in the regulatory arena. However, experiments involving stem cells are associated with challenges such as variability and reproducibility. Standards can be a valuable tool to find the right balance between the intrinsic biological variability of stem cells and the acceptable level of reproducibility of test results. Several documents discussing standards and best practices for working with stem cells have already been published. The aim of this session, organised by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, is to discuss about the current level of adoption of standards and best practices in non-clinical research and on how to facilitate their implementation. The view of experts from stem cell research, industry, and regulatory agencies will be gathered in a panel discussion.