Derrick J. Rossi (born 5 February 1966), [1] is a Canadian stem cell biologist and entrepreneur. He is a co-founder of the pharmaceutical company Moderna.
Derrick J. Rossi (born 5 February 1966), [1] is a Canadian stem cell biologist and entrepreneur. He is a co-founder of the pharmaceutical company Moderna.
Rossi was born in Toronto as the youngest of five children of a Maltese immigrant family. [2] His father Fred worked in auto body shops for 50 years [3] and his mother Agnes co-owned a Maltese bakery. [2]
Rossi attended the Dr. Norman Bethune High School in Scarborough where he early discovered his passion for molecular biology. [2] He then did his undergraduate and master's degrees in molecular genetics at the University of Toronto. [4] He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Helsinki in 2003 and held a post-doc position from 2003 to 2007 at Stanford University in Irving Weissman’s lab. [5]
Rossi was appointed Associate Professor at the Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology Department at Harvard Medical School and Harvard University.[ when? ] [6] At the same time he was a principal faculty member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and an investigator at the Immune Disease Institute (IDI), [7] as well as in the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the Children’s Hospital Boston. [8]
Moderna was founded in 2010, based on discovery that pluripotent stem cells can be transformed and reprogrammed. [9] [10] Time magazine cited this pluripotent discovery as one of the top ten medical breakthroughs of the year. [11]
In 2013 Rossi, Chien and their team reported that they "were able to improve heart function in mice and enhance their long-term survival with a "redirection of their [stem cell] differentiation toward cardiovascular cell types" in a significant step towards regenerative therapeutics for Moderna. [12] [13] In the same year and on the strength of the same paper Moderna was able to partner with AstraZeneca in exchange for $240 million "in upfront cash (plus much more in potential milestone payments)", and then received from other investors $110 million. [12]
In 2014 Rossi retired from his functions at the board and as a scientific advisor at Moderna. [2]
In 2015 Rossi was scientific co-founder of Intellia Therapeutics. In 2016 Rossi co-founded Magenta Therapeutics. Rossi was involved in the foundation of Stelexis Therapeutics, which develops new medication for treating cancerous stem cells.[ when? ] [6] [4] [14]
In 2018 Rossi retired from all of his Harvard positions in order to focus on his activities as an entrepreneur. [4] [2] Rossi serves as the interim CEO of the New York Stem Cell Foundation. [6] Rossi is also CEO of Convelo Therapeutics. [15]
Rossi develops and promotes new therapies using biotechnological methods thus contributing to novel approaches in regenerative medicine. [6] His research focussed on different aspects of stem cell biology. [4] In order to avoid ethical issues related to the use and exploitation of human stem cells, Rossi based his developments on the results of Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman on mRNA. He succeeded in finding investors for his plans to transfer these findings into new medications and vaccinations by founding Moderna. [16]
Rossi is on record as writing of his synthetic modified mRNA: "because our technology is RNA based, it completely eliminates the risk of genomic integration and insertional mutagenesis inherent to all DNA-based methodologies." [17]
In 2021 he was awarded the Princess of Asturias Award in the category "Scientific Research". [18]
Rossi is married to Finnish biologist Nina Korsisaari and father of three daughters. [2] [19]
Cellular differentiation is the process in which a stem cell changes from one type to a differentiated one. Usually, the cell changes to a more specialized type. Differentiation happens multiple times during the development of a multicellular organism as it changes from a simple zygote to a complex system of tissues and cell types. Differentiation continues in adulthood as adult stem cells divide and create fully differentiated daughter cells during tissue repair and during normal cell turnover. Some differentiation occurs in response to antigen exposure. Differentiation dramatically changes a cell's size, shape, membrane potential, metabolic activity, and responsiveness to signals. These changes are largely due to highly controlled modifications in gene expression and are the study of epigenetics. With a few exceptions, cellular differentiation almost never involves a change in the DNA sequence itself. However, metabolic composition does get altered quite dramatically where stem cells are characterized by abundant metabolites with highly unsaturated structures whose levels decrease upon differentiation. Thus, different cells can have very different physical characteristics despite having the same genome.
In genetics and developmental biology, somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) is a laboratory strategy for creating a viable embryo from a body cell and an egg cell. The technique consists of taking a denucleated oocyte and implanting a donor nucleus from a somatic (body) cell. It is used in both therapeutic and reproductive cloning. In 1996, Dolly the sheep became famous for being the first successful case of the reproductive cloning of a mammal. In January 2018, a team of scientists in Shanghai announced the successful cloning of two female crab-eating macaques from foetal nuclei.
Vaccinia virus is a large, complex, enveloped virus belonging to the poxvirus family. It has a linear, double-stranded DNA genome approximately 190 kbp in length, which encodes approximately 250 genes. The dimensions of the virion are roughly 360 × 270 × 250 nm, with a mass of approximately 5–10 fg. The vaccinia virus is the source of the modern smallpox vaccine, which the World Health Organization (WHO) used to eradicate smallpox in a global vaccination campaign in 1958–1977. Although smallpox no longer exists in the wild, vaccinia virus is still studied widely by scientists as a tool for gene therapy and genetic engineering.
Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are pluripotent stem cells derived from the inner cell mass of a blastocyst, an early-stage pre-implantation embryo. Human embryos reach the blastocyst stage 4–5 days post fertilization, at which time they consist of 50–150 cells. Isolating the inner cell mass (embryoblast) using immunosurgery results in destruction of the blastocyst, a process which raises ethical issues, including whether or not embryos at the pre-implantation stage have the same moral considerations as embryos in the post-implantation stage of development.
In biology, reprogramming refers to erasure and remodeling of epigenetic marks, such as DNA methylation, during mammalian development or in cell culture. Such control is also often associated with alternative covalent modifications of histones.
James Joseph Collins is an American biomedical engineer and bioengineer who serves as the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering & Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he is also a director at the MIT Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health.
Douglas A. Melton is an American medical researcher who is the Xander University Professor at Harvard University, and was an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute until 2022. Melton serves as the co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and was the first co-chairman of the Harvard University Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology. Melton is the founder of several biotech companies including Gilead Sciences, Ontogeny, iPierian, and Semma Therapeutics. Melton holds membership in the National Academy of the Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a founding member of the International Society for Stem Cell Research.
Induced pluripotent stem cells are a type of pluripotent stem cell that can be generated directly from a somatic cell. The iPSC technology was pioneered by Shinya Yamanaka and Kazutoshi Takahashi in Kyoto, Japan, who together showed in 2006 that the introduction of four specific genes, collectively known as Yamanaka factors, encoding transcription factors could convert somatic cells into pluripotent stem cells. Shinya Yamanaka was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize along with Sir John Gurdon "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent."
Shinya Yamanaka is a Japanese stem cell researcher and a Nobel Prize laureate. He is a professor and the director emeritus of Center for iPS Cell Research and Application, Kyoto University; as a senior investigator at the UCSF-affiliated Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco, California; and as a professor of anatomy at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Yamanaka is also a past president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR).
Gladstone Institutes is an independent, non-profit biomedical research organization whose focus is to better understand, prevent, treat and cure cardiovascular, viral and neurological conditions such as heart failure, HIV/AIDS and Alzheimer's disease. Its researchers study these diseases using techniques of basic and translational science. Another focus at Gladstone is building on the development of induced pluripotent stem cell technology by one of its investigators, 2012 Nobel Laureate Shinya Yamanaka, to improve drug discovery, personalized medicine and tissue regeneration.
Cell potency is a cell's ability to differentiate into other cell types. The more cell types a cell can differentiate into, the greater its potency. Potency is also described as the gene activation potential within a cell, which like a continuum, begins with totipotency to designate a cell with the most differentiation potential, pluripotency, multipotency, oligopotency, and finally unipotency.
Induced stem cells (iSC) are stem cells derived from somatic, reproductive, pluripotent or other cell types by deliberate epigenetic reprogramming. They are classified as either totipotent (iTC), pluripotent (iPSC) or progenitor or unipotent – (iUSC) according to their developmental potential and degree of dedifferentiation. Progenitors are obtained by so-called direct reprogramming or directed differentiation and are also called induced somatic stem cells.
Moderna, Inc. is a pharmaceutical and biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that focuses on RNA therapeutics, primarily mRNA vaccines. These vaccines use a copy of a molecule called messenger RNA (mRNA) to carry instructions for proteins to produce an immune response. The company's name is derived from the terms "modified", "RNA", and "modern".
Stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP) was a proposed method of generating pluripotent stem cells by subjecting ordinary cells to certain types of stress, such as the application of a bacterial toxin, submersion in a weak acid, or physical trauma. The technique gained prominence in January 2014 when research by Haruko Obokata et al. was published in Nature. Over the following months, all scientists who tried to duplicate her results failed, and suspicion arose that Obokata's results were due to error or fraud. An investigation by her employer, RIKEN, was launched. On April 1, 2014, RIKEN concluded that Obokata had falsified data to obtain her results. On June 4, 2014, Obokata agreed to retract the papers. On August 5, 2014, Yoshiki Sasai—Obokata's supervisor at RIKEN and one of the coauthors on the STAP cell papers—was found dead at a RIKEN facility after an apparent suicide by hanging.
An mRNAvaccine is a type of vaccine that uses a copy of a molecule called messenger RNA (mRNA) to produce an immune response. The vaccine delivers molecules of antigen-encoding mRNA into immune cells, which use the designed mRNA as a blueprint to build foreign protein that would normally be produced by a pathogen or by a cancer cell. These protein molecules stimulate an adaptive immune response that teaches the body to identify and destroy the corresponding pathogen or cancer cells. The mRNA is delivered by a co-formulation of the RNA encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles that protect the RNA strands and help their absorption into the cells.
Katalin "Kati" Karikó is a Hungarian-American biochemist who specializes in ribonucleic acid (RNA)-mediated mechanisms, particularly in vitro-transcribed messenger RNA (mRNA) for protein replacement therapy. Karikó laid the scientific groundwork for mRNA vaccines, overcoming major obstacles and skepticism in the scientific community. Karikó received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2023 for her work, along with American immunologist Drew Weissman.
Kenneth R. Chien is an American doctor and medical scientist who has been a research director at Karolinska Institute, in Stockholm, since 2013. Chien has several papers with over 1,000 citations and a h-index of 132. His area of expertise is cardiovascular science. His research into regenerative cardiovascular medicine, specifically while director of the Cardiovascular Program of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, led to his co-founding, in 2010, of ModeRNA Therapeutics. In 2018, the company re-branded as Moderna, Inc. Chien is a recipient of the Walter Bradford Cannon Award of the American Physiology Society and the Pasarow Award. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and has received an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh.
A nucleoside-modified messenger RNA (modRNA) is a synthetic messenger RNA (mRNA) in which some nucleosides are replaced by other naturally modified nucleosides or by synthetic nucleoside analogues. modRNA is used to induce the production of a desired protein in certain cells. An important application is the development of mRNA vaccines, of which the first authorized were COVID-19 vaccines.
Drew Weissman is an American physician and immunologist known for his contributions to RNA biology. Weissman is the inaugural Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research, director of the Penn Institute for RNA Innovation, and professor of medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn).
JacobH. Hanna is a Palestinian Arab-Israeli biologist who is working as a professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. An expert in embryonic stem cell research, he is most recognized for developing the first bona fide synthetic embryo models from stem cells in the petri dish in mice and humans.
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