Steven L. Stice

Dr. Steven Stice awarded the highest scholastic faculty award; the D.W. Brooks Distinguished Professorship is also a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar endowed chair, elected fellow of the National Academy of Inventors and director of the Regenerative Bioscience Center (RBC) at the University of Georgia. The RBC consist of more than 35 faculty/researchers, representing six different colleges. (www.rbc.uga.edu)

He has over 35 years of research and development experience in biotechnology and is a co-founder of five biotechnology companies, including Aruna Biomedical and SciStem, where he currently serves as Chief Scientific Officer. Aruna was the first company to commercialize a product derived from human pluripotent stem cells, and the company has developed stem cells that were used to facilitate clinical testing of Pfizer’s current cognitive enhancing pharmaceuticals.

Dr. Stice sits as one of the co-directors for REM, Regenerative Engineering and Medicine — a partnership between; Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology and UGA. He also plays an active leadership role in EBICS: Emergent Behaviors of Integrated Cellular Systems, a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center founded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Stice serves as a member of the Science Advisory Board to the National Center for Toxicological Research of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Science Board provides advice to the Commissioner and other appropriate officials on specific complex scientific and technical issues important to FDA and its mission, including emerging issues within the scientific community. Stice is leading researchers at the RBC in a newly funded $50 million NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC) for Cell Manufacturing Technologies dubbed; (CMaT), designed to hasten the development of advanced cell therapies for a range of chronic diseases, including heart disease and cancer. He is the UGA CMaT Campus Director for CMaT and Co-PI.

Prior to joining UGA, Dr. Stice was the co-founder and served as both CSO and CEO of Advanced Cell Technology, the only US company currently in human clinical trials using human pluripotent stem cells. Additionally, he co-founded startups; Prolinia and Cytogenesis, which later merged with what is now ViaCyte.

Dr. Stice has led industry and academic research teams in the area of pluripotent stem cells for over 35 years. In 2001, his labs were first in deriving one set of the original human embryonic stem cell lines in collaboration with BresaGen, Inc. (BG01, 02 and 03), and these lines were placed on the first NIH human ESC registry. Dr. Stice produced the first cloned rabbit in 1987 and the first cloned transgenic calves in 1998 (George and Charlie). In 1997 his group produced the first genetically modified embryonic stem cell derived pigs and cattle. This research led to publications in Science and Nature journals, national news coverage (CBS, NBC, ABC and CNN) and the first US patents on cloning animals and cattle embryonic stem cells. His laboratories were one of only five NIH sponsored sites for training NIH investigators on the propagation, differentiation and use of hESC over a six-year period.

Currently, the Stice lab is developing novel therapies which could change the lives of those suffering from neurological diseases and stroke damage. His research focuses on neural stem cell-derived Exosome treatments to promote brain repair after stroke or TBI. An important aim of the lab is the development of cell-based assays to support high-throughput chemical and compound screening, ultimately leading to better reproducibility and predictability resulting in more effective drug therapies.