25 Feb Stem cell pioneer Thomson to direct regenerative medicine at Morgridge
Madison, Wis. – The University of Wisconsin-Madison has announced that stem cell researcher James Thomson has accepted the position of director of regenerative biology and will become a principal scientist at the new Morgridge Institute for Research.
Thomson, a professor of anatomy at the UW-Madison School of Medicine, becomes the first member of the institute’s multidisciplinary scientific leadership team. Thomson will retain his faculty appointment at the university.
The new facility will house the twin Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery — the private Morgridge Institute for Research and the public Wisconsin Institute for Discovery — when it opens in the fall 2010.
The Morgridge Institute will continue to search for an executive director to head the overall organization. It plans to hire additional scientific directors to lead efforts that will include computational biology and bioengineering.
Thomson’s appointment will officially be announced in an evening UW-Madison campus event celebrating his 2007 breakthrough discovery of creating human-induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. Thomson became the first person in the world to isolate human embryonic stem (ES) cells and maintain them indefinitely in culture, a discovery that the journal Science named the Breakthrough of the Year in 1998.
The $150 million facility for the institutes is made possible through a partnership that includes the State of Wisconsin, a $50 million donation by John and Tashia Morgridge, and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
Related stories
• State of the Union: Bush endorses funding for stem cell research that does not destroy embryos
• Thomson: Wisconsin needs $50M annually to counter California’s stem cell investment
• New stem cell technique could end social controversy