Konrad Hochedlinger, PhD (pictured), Assistant Professor in Harvard's Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology and a Principal Faculty member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute is the recipient of the inaugural Outstanding Young Investigator Award supported by the University of Pittsburgh and the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR). This award, presented at the Society’s annual meeting recently held in Barcelona, Spain, recognizes the exceptional achievements of an investigator in the early part of his or her independent career in stem cell research. Dr. Hochedlinger is also a Principal Investigator in the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Regenerative Medicine where he maintains his laboratory in the MGH Cancer Center.
Dr. Hochedlinger completed his graduate training at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, although his Doctoral degree was awarded by the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, University of Vienna, in the spring of 2003. Dr. Hochedlinger, soon after joining the laboratory, demonstrated his remarkable scientific ability in an exceptionally elegant experiment.
After a brief postdoctoral experience at the Whitehead, Dr. Hochedlinger started his own laboratory at Harvard and MGH in 2006. In the few short years since then, the pace of his research in cellular reprogramming has only accelerated. Dr. Hochedlinger's laboratory has made major contributions to the literature, building upon the original observations of Shinya Yamanaka to generate induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) that showed in vitro virally delivered, gene-based reprogramming of somatic cells. Dr. Hochedlinger's laboratory demonstrated improved performance of fully reprogrammed human iPSCs and creatively exploited conditional transgene expression cassettes to define the temporal events of reprogramming; his group has investigated the epigenetic modifications that accompany reprogramming and was the first to demonstrate the generation of transgene-free iPSCs via adenoviral gene transfer. Dr. Hochedlinger's laboratory contributed to the production of the first large repository of patient-specific iPSCs.
The International Society for Stem Cell Research Outstanding Young Investigator Award is an annual recognition bestowed on an exceptional young scientist. The 2010 annual meeting will be held in San Francisco, California, June 16-19, 2010, where the next Young Investigator Award will be presented.
Illustration: Harvard University.
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Konrad Hochedlinger: ISSCR Outstanding Young Investigator for 2009
International Society for Stem Cell Research Outstanding Young Investigator Award