It’s no exaggeration to say that the health and well-being of millions of people around the globe rests in the hands of four University of Minnesota trailblazers. Doris Taylor, Karen Hsiao Ashe, Meri Firpo, and Dorothy Hatsukami are each leading medical research initiatives that could dramatically improve our quality and quantity of life within a decade—even as soon as three years from now, when Hatsukami estimates that a vaccine to prevent nicotine addiction could have Food and Drug Administration approval.
Her work on smoking, Taylor’s on creating bioartificial hearts and other organs, Ashe’s toward a molecular block (maybe in pill form) to prevent Alzheimer’s disease, and Firpo’s on stem cell engineering to cure diabetes is groundbreaking. And their affiliation with the University of Minnesota underscores the school’s history and ambition as a medical research pioneer.
“One thing that’s great about working at the University of Minnesota is that we have the world’s first stem cell program,” says Firpo, who came from the University of California four years ago. “We also have a great record of transplantation therapy—the first successful bone marrow transplant, the first pancreas transplant.”
1 | 2 Next Page »
Dorothy Hatsukami
Director of the Masonic Cancer Center’s Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center, Associate Director of the Masonic Cancer Center’s Prevention and Control Division
Karen Hsiao Ashe
Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience, Director of the N. Bud Grossman Center for Memory Research and Care
Meri Firpo
Assistant Professor in the Stem Cell Institute and the Department of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology
