James Thomson (cell biologist)

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James "Jamie" Alexander Thomson (born December 20, 1958 at Oak Park, Illinois) is an American developmental biologist who also serves as a professor of anatomy in the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. He served as the chief pathologist at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center from 1995-2002. In 2007, he became an adjunct professor in the Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB) Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara.^[1] In February 2008 he was named Director of Regenerative Biology at the Morgridge Institute for Research in Madison, Wisconsin. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2008. In the May 12, 2008 issue of TIME magazine, he was named one of 100 of the most influential people in the world.

1 Education
2 Current employment
3 Thomson's research
4 Thomson's patents
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Education

Thomson graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.S. in biophysics at the University of Illinois in 1981. He then entered the Veterinary Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving his doctorate in veterinary medicine in 1985, and his doctorate in molecular biology in 1988. His doctoral thesis, conducted under the supervision of Davor Solter at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, PA, involved understanding genetic imprinting in early mammalian development.

Dr. Thomson joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison after spending two years as a post-doctoral research fellow in the Primate In Vitro Fertilization and Experimental Embryology Laboratory at the Oregon National Primate Research Center.

[edit] Current employment

In addition to being a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he is also a member of the Genome Center of Wisconsin.

[edit] Thomson's research

Since joining the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center, he has conducted pioneering work in the isolation and culture of non-human primate and human embryonic stem cells, undifferentiated cells that have the ability to become any of the cells that make up the tissues of the body. Dr. Thomson directed the group that reported the first isolation of embryonic stem cell lines from a non-human primate in 1995, work that led his group to the first successful isolation of human embryonic stem cell lines in 1998.

On November 6, 1998, Science published the results of his research, "Embryonic Stem Cell Lines Derived from Human Blastocysts". ^[2]

On November 22, 2007, the New York Times reported that on November 20, 2007, Dr. Thomson's laboratory had reported determining a method to modify human skin cells in such a way that they appear to be embryonic stem cells without using a human embryo which was published in the journal Science and is one of the two revolutionary iPS cell (induced pluripotent stem cell) works reported in late 2007. ^[3],^[4]

[edit] Thomson's patents

Primate Embryonic Stem Cells, 1998, U.S. Patent 5,843,780
Human Embryonic Stem Cells, 2001, U.S. Patent 6,200,806
Hematopoietic Differentiation of Pluripotent hESCs, 2001, U.S. Patent 6,280,718
Method of Making Embryoid Bodies from Primate Embryonic Stem Cells, 2003, U.S. Patent 6,602,711
Hematopoietic Differentiation of Pluripotent hESCs, 2003, U.S. Patent 6,613,568
Method of In Vitro Differentiation of Transplantable Neural Precursor Cells from Primate Embryonic Stem Cells, 2005, U.S. Patent 6,887,706
Method for Generating Primate Trophoblasts, 2006, U.S. Patent 7,148,062
Primate Embryonic Stem Cells, 2006, U.S. Patent 7,029,913
Serum Free Cultivation of Primate Embryonic Stem Cells, 2006, U.S. Patent 7,005,252