Armed with a life-long passion for improving healthcare, I am delighted to join the Center for Stem Cell & Organoid Medicine (CuSTOM) Program. My 20+ year professional career spans corporate leadership, academic healthcare administration, laboratory and biorepository operations, molecular biology and genomics research, clinical research and regulatory affairs, strategy, and business development. I bring essential industry expertise to the program with a record of successful product development, analytical and clinical study performance, and regulatory submissions resulting in approval and subsequent launch of revolutionary healthcare products. As such, I am thrilled to contribute to the CuSTOM Program to bring new and life-saving stem cell and organoid therapies to patients.

Emmanuel Edward Baetge
Venture Partner at Nanodimension Management

Dr. Emmanuel Edward Baetge is venture partner at Nanodimension Management. Dr. Baetge was most recently a founding director of the Nestlé Institute of Health Sciences in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he oversaw over 150 scientists conducting pioneering research focused on personalized nutrition for the maintenance of health and prevention of chronic disease. Dr. Baetge has over 20 years of experience managing research in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. He previously served as CSO of ViaCyte and Modex Therapeutics. Prior to Modex, Dr. Baetge held management positions at Cyto Therapeutics and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Dr. Baetge holds a PhD in molecular neurobiology from Cornell University and completed post-doctoral work at Cornell University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Seigo Izumo
Ex-Senior Vice President Global Head of Regenerative Medicine Unit at Takeda

Dr. Seigo Izumo is the chair of management board at Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Previously Dr. Izumo was vice president and head of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Drug Discovery Unit at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, where he directed research and early development of novel drugs for cardiovascular, renal and metabolic diseases at Takeda. Before that he served as senior vice president and head of Cardiovascular Therapeutics for Gilead Sciences and vice president & Global Head of Cardiovascular Research at Novartis. Prior to joining Novartis in 2003, he was a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston and at Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. In addition to his academic position at Harvard, Dr. Izumo was the director of Cardiovascular Research and Physician, Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre, Boston and director of the CardioGenomics Program, a national Heart Lung and Blood Institute-sponsored initiative. Dr. Izumo received his medical degrees from the University of Tokyo, Japan and received post-graduate medical trainings at Beth Israel Hospital and The Children's Hospital, major teaching hospitals of Harvard Medical School. He is a board-certified physician in internal medicine and cardiovascular disease subspecialty.

Stan King
Director of Investments at Third Culture Capital

Stan is a neuroscientist, social entrepreneur, and corporate development executive. His business experience spans biomedical research, academic technology transfer, and creating startups from early-stage research innovations. Currently, he is the director of Investments at Third Culture Capital, an early-stage healthcare venture capital firm. In his prior roles at MIT, the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard, Boston Children's Hospital, and Emulate, he has negotiated and executed well over a hundred licensing and strategic partnership deals with pharma, biotech, and healthcare companies, managed patent portfolios, developed go-to-market strategies, and helped secure over $100M in equity financing. Stan has a PhD in neuroscience and behavior from the University of Virginia and a BS in psychology with a minor in biology from Florida A&M University.

Mahendra Rao
CEO and Director

Dr. Mahendra Rao, panCELLa’s CEO and a director on our board, is an eminent scientist in the field of stem cell biology. He is internationally known for his research on human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and has over two decades experience, not only in the academic aspects of the field, but also in government, regulation and the industrial and clinical applications of stem cells.

As the founding director of the Centre for Regenerative Medicine (CRM) at NIH, he oversaw the generation of 400 induced Pluripotent Stem Cell (iPSC) lines slated for use in clinical therapies for a range of degenerative disorders. He has served as scientific advisor to companies and foundations such as Life Technologies (now Thermo Fisher Scientific) and the New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF). Dr. Rao has also worked with the US Food and Drug Authority (FDA) and has served on advisory panels to the governments of the US, Singapore and India on policies regarding hESCs (human Embryonic Stem Cells).

Lorenz Studer, MD, is the director of the Center for Stem Cell Biology and a member of the Developmental Biology Program at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. His lab has established many of the currently available techniques for turning human pluripotent stem cells into the diverse cell types of the nervous system. He has also been among the first to realize the potential of patient-specific stem cells in modeling human disease and in drug discovery and has developed strategies to measure and manipulate cellular age in pluripotent-derived lineages. Finally, he has a major interest in regenerative medicine and currently leads a multidisciplinary consortium to pursue the clinical application of human stem cell-derived dopamine neurons for the treatment of Parkinson's disease. Recent awards recognizing Dr. Studer’s work include a MacArthur Fellowship, the Ogawa-Yamanaka Prize and the Jacob Heskel Gabbay Award in Biotechnology and Medicine.

Masayo Takahashi, MD, PhD
President at Vision Care Inc.

Masayo Takahashi MD, PhD, is a president at Vision Care Inc. After she received her MD and PhD from Kyoto University, Dr. Takahashi worked as an ophthalmologist in the Kyoto University Hospital. Dr. Takahashi discovered the potential of stem cells as a tool for retina therapy when she moved to the Salk Institute, in the United States. She joined RIKEN in 2006, where her team launched a pilot clinical study using iPS cells first in human in 2013. She started a new career, as the president of a start up company; Vision Care Inc., to proceed and implement clinical therapy.