James "Jamie" Alexander Thomson (born December 20 1958 at Oak Park, Illinois) is an American developmental biologist who also serves as a professor of anatomy in the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and as the chief pathologist at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center.
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Education
Thomson graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.S. in biophysics at the University of Illinois in 1981. He then entered the Veterinary Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving his doctorate in veterinary medicine in 1985, and his doctorate in molecular biology in 1988. His doctoral thesis, conducted under the supervision of Davor Solter at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, PA, involved understanding genetic imprinting in early mammalian development. Dr. Thomson joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison after spending two years as a post-doctoral research fellow in the Primate In Vitro Fertilization and Experimental Embryology Laboratory at the Oregon National Primate Research Center.
Current employment
In addition to being a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he is also a member of the Genome Center of Wisconsin.
Thomson's research
Since joining the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center, he has conducted pioneering work in the isolation and culture of non-human primate and human embryonic stem cells, undifferentiated cells that have the ability to become any of the cells that make up the tissues of the body. Dr. Thomson directed the group that reported the first isolation of embryonic stem cell lines from a non-human primate in 1995, work that led his group to the first successful isolation of human embryonic stem cell lines in 1998. On November 6, 1998, Science published the results of his research, "Embryonic Stem Cell Lines Derived from Human Blastocysts". [1] On November 22, 2007, the New York Times reported that on November 20, 2007, Dr. Thomson's laboratory had reported determining a method to modify human skin cells in such a way that they appear to be embryonic stem cells without using a human embryo. [2]
Thomson's patents
- Primate Embryonic Stem Cells, 1998, U.S. Patent 5,843,780
- Human Embryonic Stem Cells, 2001, U.S. Patent 6,200,806
- Hematopoietic Differentiation of Pluripotent hESCs, 2001, U.S. Patent 6,280,718
- Method of Making Embryoid Bodies from Primate Embryonic Stem Cells, 2003, U.S. Patent 6,602,711
- Hematopoietic Differentiation of Pluripotent hESCs, 2003, U.S. Patent 6,613,568
- Method of In Vitro Differentiation of Transplantable Neural Precursor Cells from Primate Embryonic Stem Cells, 2005, U.S. Patent 6,887,706
- Method for Generating Primate Trophoblasts, 2006, U.S. Patent 7,148,062
- Primate Embryonic Stem Cells, 2006, U.S. Patent 7,029,913
- Serum Free Cultivation of Primate Embryonic Stem Cells, 2006, U.S. Patent 7,005,252
References
- ^ "Embryonic Stem Cell Lines Derived from Human Blastocysts", Science, November 6, 1998
- ^ "Man Who Helped Start Stem Cell War May End It", New York Times, November 22, 2007
