Ground breaking work with fellowship money

Bedford Research Foundation supports ground breaking work with fellowship money

As the result of a generous benefactor, the Bedford Research Foundation has placed a fellow in Spain who is contributing significantly to understanding cellular programming and pluripotency in Stem Cells.

Dr. Sebastian Canovas is a Principal Investigator researcher from the Program for Cell Therapy and Regenerative Medicine of Andalucia, Foundation “Progreso y Salud”, in Seville, Spain. Dr Canovas received his DVM in 2002 from the University of Murcia (Spain) and in 2005 he completed his Master’s degree in Biotechnology of Reproduction in Mammals. During six years (2002-2008) he was working in the group Physiology of Reproduction in embryology, sperm functionality and sperm-oocyte interactions.

Following completion of his PhD, he joined Dr. Cibelli’s laboratory (Cellular Reprogramming Laboratory) at Michigan State University (USA) where his research had been focused on understanding the mechanisms of cellular reprogramming during embryo development and induced pluripotent stem cells production. To elucidate these mechanisms, Sebastian studied the role of a H3K27me3 histome demethylase (JMJD3) in bovine at early embryo development and during human make induced pluripotent stem cells process. Also, he has development a project for enhancing the efficiency in the production of safe iPS cells using episomal plasmids and adult somatic cells.

Now, his team is involved on a project to make transdifferentiation from human somatic cells forwards germinal cells. As a result of his work, he has published more than 12 scientific papers in journals with impact factor and he is collaborating in 6 research grants. Dr. Canovas hopes these studies will help lead to cures of rare disorders and fertility, which are affecting the population but they have not an effective treatment.