Mississippi University for Women alumna Dr. Doris Taylor, a pioneer in cardiovascular cell therapy research, will address Mississippi University for Women graduates in Rent Auditorium on Saturday, May 9.
Taylor, director of regenerative medicine research at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston, also will be awarded an honorary doctorate, the university’s highest honor, at its morning commencement exercises that day.
Approximately 330 students have applied for May graduation.
Credited with a number of scientific breakthroughs related to cell therapy, stem cell biology and tissue engineering, Taylor also serves as director of the Center for Cell and Organ Biotechnology at the Texas Heart Institute and Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. She has been involved in both laboratory and clinical studies using cell therapy to treat disease. Her research focuses on the use of cell and gene therapy for the treatment of cardiovascular disease, tissue engineering of bioartificial organs and vasculature, cell-based prevention of disease, stem cells and cancer and holistic approaches to using cell therapy for treating chronic disease.
Taylor and her team are internationally renowned for their research on “whole organ decellularization,” in which they have demonstrated that they can remove the existing cells from hearts of laboratory animals, and even humans, to leave a framework for building new organs. The hope is that this research is an early step toward being able to grow a fully functional human heart in the laboratory, which if it can be achieved would revolutionize the field of organ transplantation.
Taylor’s work has been published in Nature Medicine, Circulation Research, The Journal of Molecular Biology, The Journal of Biochemistry, Journal of the American College of Cardiology and Journal of the American Medical Association. She holds a number of invention disclosures, patent applications and patents and is the founder of multiple companies dedicated to cardiovascular repair technologies.
Her work has been recognized and featured by 60 Minutes, CNN, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BBC Horizon and the Oprah Winfrey Show among many others.
Taylor holds a bachelor of science degree in biology from The W and a doctorate in pharmacology from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas.
Prior to her work with the Texas Heart Institute, Taylor had been serving as director of the Center for Cardiovascular Repair and Medtronic Bakken chair in medicine and integrative biology and physiology at the University of Minnesota, and before that she was an associate professor in cardiology at Duke University Medical Center.
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