Professor Emeritus
DEPARTMENTS
Cell and Regenerative Biology
Director of Regenerative Biology, Morgridge Institute for Research
WNPRC Stem Cell Resource
CONTACT
James Thomson’s email
(608) 316-4348
OTHER WEB PAGES
Thomson lab at MIR
Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center
University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology
ALIGNED RESEARCH FOCUS
Regenerative medicine, stem cells
ORGAN SYSTEM/DISEASE FOCUS
The development and differentiation of pluripotent stem cells, including embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells
RESEARCH DESCRIPTION
In the early 1990s, my lab derived ES cells from an Old World monkey (the rhesus macaque) and a New World monkey (the common marmoset), work that led to derivation of human ES cells in 1998. Much of my lab’s research after that derivation was dedicated to establishing human ES cells as an accepted, practical model system. To that end, we developed defined culture conditions, methods for genetic manipulation, and approaches for the in vitro differentiation of human ES cells to key lineages of clinical importance including hematopoietic, neural, cardiac and placental tissues. More recently, in 2007, my laboratory described the isolation of human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells with the basic properties of human ES cells but derived from somatic cells.
My research now focuses on understanding how a cell can maintain or change identity, how a cell chooses between self-renewal and the initial decision to differentiate, and how a differentiated cell with limited developmental potential can be reprogrammed to a pluripotent cell.
My current research interests include:
- Examining the transcriptional networks in ES cells that mediate self-renewal and commitment to each of the basic lineages of the early embryo
- Mapping the epigenome of ES cells and their early-differentiated derivatives as a participant in the San Diego Epigenome Center
- Improving methods for generating human iPS cells, and correcting genetic defects in iPS cells generated from patients with degenerative retinal disease
- Developing new strategies to convert human pluripotent stem and somatic cells into hematopoietic, vascular and cardiac progenitor cells
- Understanding clocking mechanisms that control developmental rates