Talk:Ann Tsukamoto

Untitled
Original Wikipedia Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Tsukamoto

Life and Eduction:

Ann Tsukamoto (born July 6th, 1952) is an Asian-American stem-cell researcher who was born in Los Angeles. She first attended the University of California, San Diego where she received her undergraduate degree and later went on to receive her Ph. D. in microbiology and immunology at the University of California, Los Angeles. In addition, Dr. Tsukamoto participated in postdoctoral work with Nobel Laureate, Dr. Harold Varmus at the University of California, San Francisco, researching the wnt-1 gene and transgenic models for breast cancer. She is currently married to her former research colleague Irving Wiseman.

Innovation:

During her tenure at SyStemix (1989-1997), Dr. Tsukamoto and her team were leading researchers in the stem cell field. In 1991, along with her colleagues, Charles M. Baum, Irving Wiseman, and Yukoh Aihara; Tsukamoto was able to isolate and discover the hematopoietic stem cells (blood-forming stem cells) hHSC, and later knew a leading role in the launch of the first clinical research program for this cell. These programs revealed that the hHSC cell was able to successfully regenerate the blood forming system of cancer patients after myeloablative chemotherapy which was a step forward in the medical field as it also paved the way for the development of bone marrow transplants that treat blood cancer. Her work on the isolation process of the human blood stem cell was awarded a patent in 1991. In 1998, Dr. Tsukamoto joined StemCells, Inc. where she was executive vice president for Scientific and Strategic Alliances and oversaw the isolation of other types of cells such as neural, liver, pancreatic and spinal stem cells. During her time there, she and her team of scientists were the first to discover the human nervous system stem cell (HUCNS-SC); later on, they were also able to isolate a second candidate stem cell for the liver. Moreover, the second candidate stem cell for the liver helped the human neural stem cell transition into the beginning of the clinical development of the three areas of the central nervous system which are the brain, the spinal cord and the eye. These discoveries helped further our understanding of stem cells and opened the door to new potential treatments. Researchers believe that stem cells can help people suffering from numerous diseases such as Alzheimer’s, spinal cord injuries, diabetes, cancer, arthritis, and can also be a tool to regenerative medicine as stem cells can help new tissue. At the end of her career, Dr. Tsukamoto had 12 patents registered under her name with about half of the being attributed to her work on human hematopoietic stem cells.

Her Innovation in the World Today:

Stem cell therapies are now a popular topic in the medical field, these are discoveries that would not have been possible without and the work and innovations of Dr. Ann Tsukamoto and her colleagues. These treatments now help patients of both autoimmune diseases and cancer as well as a variety of others and throughout the years have saved countless lives.

References:

CelebsWiki. “Ann Tsukamoto Biography, Age, Height, Husband, Net Worth, Family.” Celebrity Age Wiki, Celebrity Wiki, 30 Sept. 2020, www.celebsagewiki.com/ann-tsukamoto. “Ann Tsukamoto.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 6 Apr. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Tsukamoto. Sciences, National Academies of, et al. “Speaker Biographical Sketches.” Exploring the State of the Science in the Field of Regenerative Medicine: Challenges of and Opportunities for Cellular Therapies: Proceedings of a Workshop., U.S. National Library of Medicine, 15 Mar. 2017, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK436801/.