Elaine Dzierzak

Director

Elaine Dzierzak is the Director of the Erasmus MC Stem Cell Institute and a Full Professor in the Department of Cell Biology. She studied biology at the University of Illlinois (BSc)m received her PhD in Biology from Yale University, and did postdoctoral training at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). As a postdoctoral fellow, she was the first to demonstrate the expression of a retrovirally transduced therapeutic gene in hematopoietic cells after bone marrow stem cell transplantation. As a Staff Scientist at the National Institute for Medical Research (London), she changed the long-held textbook dogma of the yolk sac origins of the adult hematopoietic system, showing that adult-type hematopoietic stem cells are generated from the embryonic aorta. In 1996 she moved her research group to Erasmus Medical Center (Rotterdam) where she is a Professor of Developmental Biology and the founder and co-director of the Master of Science Program in Molecular Medicine. Her achievements include a ZonMW VICI award, an NIH merit award, an elected member of EMBO, Director of the BSIK SCDD consortium and Co-Director of the new FES-funded Netherlands Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Her most recent findings demonstrate that hematopoietic stem cells arise from embryonic vascular endothelial cells, are induced by developmental growth factors and mechanical stimulation at the onset of embryonic circulation, and can be harvested from human placentas normally discarded at birth. She aims to identify the molecules involved in the endothelial to hematopoietic transdifferentiation event and to generate patient-specific hematopoietic stem cells for clinical cell replacement therapies to treat blood-related genetic diseases and leukemias.

  • North et al (2002). Immunity 16:661-672.
  • de Bruijn et al (2002). Immunity 16:673-684.
  • Mendes et al (2005). Development 132:1127-1136.
  • Ottersbach and Dzierzak (2005). Developmental Cell 8:377-38.
  • Robin et al. (2006). Developmental Cell 11:171-180
  • Durand et al (2007). Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 52 :20838-20843.
  • Dzierzak and Speck (2008). Nat. Imm. 9 (2):129-136.
  • Ledran et al. (2008) Cell Stem Cell, 3:85-98.
  • Robert-Moreno et al (2008). EMBO 27:1886-1895.
  • Chen et al. (2009). Nature 457:887-891.
  • North et al (2009). Cell, 137:736-748.
  • Peeters et al. (2009) Development, 136:2613-2621.
  • Dzierzak (2009). Blood 114(2):229-30.
  • Robin et al (2009). Cell Stem Cell 5:385-395.
  • Mascarenhas et al (2009). Blood 114:4645-53.
  • Boisset et al (2010). Nature 464:116-20.
  • Yokomizo et al (2010). Development 137: 3651-3661.
  • Wilson et al (2010).  Cell Stem Cell 7: 532-544.
  • Goossens et al (2011). Blood 117: 5620-5630.
  • Robin. (2011) Blood. 2011 117: 5088-5091.
  • Yokomizo(2011)  Blood. 117: 6132-6134.
  • Chen (2011) Cell Stem Cell. In press.
  • Yokomizo et al (2011). Nature Protocols In press.

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