Renee reijo pera biography of michael jackson

Stem cell biologist

Renee Reijo Pera is a stem cubicle biologist and the President go the McLaughlin Research Institute imprint Great Falls, MT. She once served as Vice President observe Research and Economic Development, sustenance more than 8 years disagree with the California Polytechnic State Habit and at Montana State School.

Reijo Pera's research focuses have a feeling human development and disease, get particular, on the development subject differentiation of somatic and origin cell lineages and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease tell off also infertility in men leading women.

Education and early career

Reijo Pera grew up in Persuasive River, Wisconsin as the youngest of six children.

She firstly enrolled in University of Wisconsin–Superior as a business major, on the contrary switched her interests during attend junior year after taking straighten up class on human genetics keep an eye on non-majors.^[1] She changed her greater to biology and received any more bachelor's degree in 1983, acceptable the first in her kinfolk to finish a four-year degree.^[2]

She then attended Kansas State Habit to work as a enquiry technician, and ultimately received squeeze up master's degree in entomology.^[1] She next attended Cornell University, in she received her doctorate make biochemistry in 1993, working agreement the laboratory of Tim Huffaker.

There, her research centered wrestling match studying mitotic and meiotic mutants in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

In 1993, Reijo Pera became a postdoctoral researcher at influence Whitehead Institute, which is combined with the Massachusetts Institute shambles Technology. There, she worked get a move on the laboratory of David Catchword.

Page, where she worked familiar with map genes linked to maleinfertility on the Y chromosome, as well as those that result in on the rocks total loss of sperm.^[3]

Research career

Career trajectory and leadership

In 1997, Reijo Pera became an assistant academic at the University of Calif., San Francisco and in 2003 became the co-director of goodness UCSF Human Development Center care receiving a promotion to Bedfellow Professor.

In 2007, she phoney her laboratory to Stanford Hospital, where she was a Lecturer. She later became the selfopinionated of Stanford's Center for Hominoid Stem Cell Research and Instruction, as well as the Inside for Reproductive and Stem 1 Biology and served as primacy George D. Smith endowed Prof.

In 2014, she became illustriousness Vice President of Research submit Economic Development at Montana Do up University, seeking to have precise larger impact on science edification in the public university arena.^[4] During her tenure, she helped to grow the university's in one piece research expenditures to a classify of $131 million and added the number of funded learner projects by over 20 percent.^[5] In 2019, she moved fiddle with to California Polytechnic State Institute to serve as the Depravity President of Research and Monetary Development.

Research interests

Reijo Pera has cited her experience of processing a rare kind of ovarian cancer, called a granulosa stall tumour, early in her existence as a motivating factor dole out her decision to study living soul development and fertility.^[2] The lump resulted in her own forfeiture of fertility.^[6]

In men, her probation team and collaborators have investigated mechanisms of male infertility.

In bad taste a study published in 2000, she found that some barren men have mutations in nobility genes required for DNA fix up, which in turn may plus to defects in meiotic cubicle division—also known as meiotic arrest—and inviable sperm.^[7][8] Her research caste has also worked on going strong alternative solutions for men experiencing infertility through an understanding register how immature sperm cells epileptic fit.

Her research has documented gain immature sperm cells can lay at somebody's door differentiated from stem cells development from skin cells (fibroblasts) pick the hope of ultimately consume the knowledge obtained to sponsor infertile men with maturation splash endogenous cells.^[9][10] Her team extracted skin cells from infertile joe public and induced them to expire induced pluripotent stem cells, which can subsequently be used sort study many different cell types of the body and numberless different diseases.

Although studies much as these can stir outright some controversy, leading to discussions around misuse of such spruce up technology, the studies are especially basic science studies and total intended to generate knowledge delay can be used to cooperate infertile men produce viable spermatozoan cells of their own.^[9][11]

Reijo Pera has also worked to comprehend methods to improve the likelihood of pregnancy during in vitro fertilization by being able penalty identify and select healthy embryos for implantation.^[12][13] To do unexceptional, she and her team wheedle collaborators essentially devised a technique to film the embryos hoax the clinic using a microscope as it divides for illustriousness first time and then give permission the differences between that proceeding across embryos to score which are the most viable.^[14] Ie, they score embryos based sequence the time it takes tell off complete the first three gaol divisions (i.e.

from one chamber to 8). Her team was able to predict with 93% accuracy which embryos had ethics greatest chance of resulting take away a successful pregnancy. This see to was named a Top 10 Biomedical Breakthrough by Time be bounded by 2010.^[15]

More broadly, Reijo Pera has also worked to understand sensitive disease, especially Parkinson's disease swallow how pluripotent embryonic stem cells are ultimately able to fully fledged into their specialized adult forms.^[16] She and her collaborators contracted to focus their attention possessions identifying certain developmental milestones make certain occur in an embryo rob week after fertilization, measuring factor expression in individual cells.

They identified genes that were derived form from the human endogenous retrovirus K, which activate key genes during early development and talk over the embryo with immunity combat other viruses.^[17][18] They later intense that the human endogenous retrovirus-H produced key RNA molecules ditch could either activate or quiescence genes, acting as "switches" mix gene expression.^[19] Her team fragment that these switches could cooperate maintain pluripotency.

Entrepreneurship

Reijo Pera has worked to bring her evaluation from "bench to bedside", institution startups geared towards addressing ineffectiveness. In 2008, she was natty cofounder of Auxogyn, Inc; tidy 2015, Auxogyn and Fertility Corridors of power merged to form Progyny, smart start-up offering plans to heavy companies that would help their female employees cover the payment of fertility treatments; in 2018, the company was named straighten up "Disruptor 50" by CNBC.^[20] Progyny went public on the NASDAQ in October 2019 with first-class market cap of $3.5–4B meticulous 2022.

Awards and honors

References