Speaker Profile
Amander Clark

Amander Clark PhD

Cell and Developmental Biology, Molecular Biology
Los Angeles, California, United States of America

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Dr. Clark is currently Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental biology in the Division of Life Sciences, College of Letters and Science. Dr. Clark joined the UCLA faculty in 2006 as an Assistant Professor, was awarded tenure in 2012 and full Professor in 2015. Early on in her appointment, Dr. Clark teamed up with her new UCLA colleagues in a race to derive the first human pluripotent stem cells by induced reprogramming. In 2008, they were one of the first teams in the world to publish proof-of-principle that human induced pluripotent stem cells could be derived from human fibroblasts. This work has been cited more than 800 times. Using induced pluripotent stem cells is a critical advance for reproductive stem cell biologists as it now opens up the possibility of generating germline cells to understand genetic causes of human infertility in the future. In addition, Dr. Clark’s laboratory was also the first to uncover the transcriptome of male and female human germline cells during embryo development. This work is currently being used as a resource to measure germline quality with stem cell differentiation, and as a discovery tool to identify potential causes of human germ cell tumors, a disease that also affected her father when she was a young girl growing up in country Australia. Using these new tools, Dr. Clark is particularly interested in generating germline cells from stem cells to understand epigenetic inheritance and how changes to the epigenome can lead to disease.

A member of the UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center, Dr. Clark is also affiliated with UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Molecular Biology Institute and the Hinxton Group, an international consortium focused on stem cells, ethics and the law. She is a member of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the Society for the Study of Reproduction and the International Society for Stem Cell Research, a nonprofit organization that fosters the exchange of stem cell research information.

Dr Clark considers herself very fortunate to be supported by the National Institutes of Health, California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center, STOP Cancer, Lance Armstrong Foundation, Fuller Foundation and the Lalor Foundation.
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