Irving Weissman

Irving L. Weissman, MD, Professor, Department of Pathology, Pathology Stem Cell Institute; Professor, Department of Developmental Biology; Professor (by courtesy), Department of Biology; Professor (by courtesy), Department of Neurosurgery; Virginia & D.K. Ludwig Professor for Clinical Investigation in Cancer Research; Director, Ludwig Center for Cancer Stem Cell Research; Director, Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (SCBRM); Stanford University School of Medicine

Research Description: Research by Dr. Weissman on stem cells led to several fundamental discoveries and the development of new therapies relevant to diabetes mellitus, particularly type 1 diabetes. These include the isolation and transplantation of pure hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and the demonstration that, upon transplantation, pure HSCs can regenerate the entire blood and immune system in a host without causing graft vs. host disease. To improve HSC transplantation, he led collaborations with SDRC members Judith Shizuru and Agnieszka Czechowicz to develop specific and effective conditioning strategies for HSC transplantation without chemotherapy or radiation. To facilitate clinically-relevant preclinical studies, he developed a novel immunodeficient SCID-hu mouse that his group and others have used to verify human HSC activity. He extended his early work on CD47 overexpression of persistently infected cells, to clinical fibrotic diseases such as IPF, systemic sclerosis, NAFLD, etc; and to clonal expansion of smooth muscle cells that cause atherosclerosis. Recent studies led by Dr. Weissman have also identified and characterized candidate stem cells for neuroendocrine tumors of the pancreas, a system now being developed to investigate the physiological and pathological mechanisms underlying pancreatic endocrine cell proliferation and fate, an area of investigation highly relevant to diabetes research. As director of SCBRM, Dr. Weissman oversees multiple research projects and efforts directly focused on diabetes research, including studies by over 20 members of SDRC.

Selected relevant publications (Stanford DRC Members in BOLD):

  1. Tevlin R, Gulati GS, Murphy MP, Marecic O, Lopez M, Brewer RE, Koepke LS, Manjunath A, Ransom RC, Salhotra A, Weissman IL, Longaker MT, Chan CKF. Isolation and functional assessment of mouse skeletal stem cell lineage. Nat Protoc. 2018 Jun;13(6):1294-1309. doi: 10.1038/nprot.2018.041. PMID: 29748647; PMCID: PMC6530903. 

  2. Ang LT, Tan AKY, Autio MI, Goh SH, Choo SH, Lee KL, Tan J, Pan B, Lee JJH, Lum JJ, Lim CYY, Yeo IKX, Wong CJY, Liu M, Oh JLL, Chia CPL, Loh CH, Chen A, Chen Q, Weissman IL, Loh KM, Lim B. A Roadmap for Human Liver Differentiation from Pluripotent Stem Cells. Cell Rep. 2018 Feb 20;22(8):2190-2205. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2018.01.087. PMID: 29466743; PMCID: PMC5854481. 

  3. Hu MS, Walmsley GG, Barnes LA, Weiskopf K, Rennert RC, Duscher D, Januszyk M, Maan ZN, Hong WX, Cheung AT, Leavitt T, Marshall CD, Ransom RC, Malhotra S, Moore AL, Rajadas J, Lorenz HP, Weissman IL, Gurtner GC, Longaker MT. Delivery of monocyte lineage cells in a biomimetic scaffold enhances tissue repair. JCI Insight. 2017 Oct 5;2(19):e96260. doi: 10.1172/jci.insight.96260. PMID: 28978794; PMCID: PMC5841872.