Melissa Carpenter PhD

Dr. Carpenter is Principal of the Carpenter Group Consulting Inc. She received a Ph.D. in the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology, University of California, Irvine. For the last 15 years, she has worked on the development of cell therapies using human adult and embryonic stem cells, in academia and industry. Her work involved discovery and translation including developing strategies for preclinical development and navigating the regulatory process.

At CytoTherapeutics (now StemCells, Inc), Dr. Carpenter derived human neural stem cells and developed the media formulation for scale-up. She has been involved with human embryonic stem cell research from the beginning. As Director of Stem Cell Biology, Geron Corporation she was responsible for managing discovery research and preclinical programs for Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injury, cardiac disease, liver disease and diabetes. After leaving Geron, Dr. Carpenter was Principal Investigator and Scientist at the Robarts Research Institute and Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Western Ontario focusing on the epigenetic status of undifferentiated human embryonic stem cells and the signaling mechanisms involved in self-renewal. As Vice President of R&D at Novocell Inc, Dr. Carpenter was responsible for the translation and regulatory strategy for the delivery of an encapsulated human embryonic stem cell derived product for diabetics.

Dr. Carpenter has 20+ issued patents and 45+ publications in stem cell biology and related fields