Prof. James Sherley Asymmetrex, LLC, USA

James L. Sherley graduated from Harvard College in 1980 with a B.A. degree in biology; and he completed joint M.D. and Ph.D. degrees at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1988. After post-doctoral studies in cancer cell molecular biology at Princeton University, he joined the Fox Chase Cancer... read moreCenter as a principal investigator in 1991. In 1998, he joined the faculty of the future Department of Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he undertook research and teaching in the areas of cancer cell molecular biology, tissue stem cell bioengineering, toxicology, and environmental health science until moving to Boston Biomedical Research Institute (BBRI) in 2007. As a Senior Member of BBRI’s research programs in Regenerative Biology and Cancer Biology, Dr. Sherley established an academic center for developing adult stem cell-based technologies for advancing cellular medicine. After leaving BBRI, in 2013, he founded Asymmetrex, LLC, which he now directs. Asymmetrex has the mission of advancing technologies for stem cell medicine. Dr. Sherley’s main contributions to the fields of cancer biology and stem cell biology include establishing a link between the p53 tumor suppressor gene and adult stem cell asymmetric self-renewal; demonstration of non-random chromosome segregation associated with adult stem cell asymmetric self-renewal; an engineered approach for routine expansion of adult stem cells in culture; discovery of specific biomarkers for adult tissue stem cells; and, more recently, development of a technology of counting adult tissue stem cells directly for the first time. Dr. Sherley’s awards include 1993 Pew Biomedical Research Scholar, 2003 Ellison Medical Foundation Senior Scholar in Aging Research, and 2006 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award. He is also “PGP-10” in the Personal Genome Project at Harvard Medical School.