Xconomist of the Week: Evan Snyder—Stem Cell Reality Check

Bruce V. Bigelow

San Diego Xconomist Evan Snyder has been called a stem cell revolutionary and is regarded as a father in the field of stem cell research. When we talked in his office at San Diegos Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, he told me he isolated the first neural stem cell in the mid-1980s, as well as the first human neural stem cell in 1998. Snyders team demonstrated the concept of stem cell pathotropism (the ability of stem cells to home in on injured or diseased regions of the brain) and helped to establish the concept that stem cells can be used to regenerate and repair diseased and damaged tissue.

He arrived in San Diego in 2003 to serve as a professor and director of the Stem Cells and Regenerative Biology Program at the Sanford-Burnham. He also is a... [via Xconomy]