Thomas P. Zwaka MD, PhD

Thomas Zwaka, MD, Ph.D., is internationally recognized for his work on pluripotent stem cells, the “master” cells that have the potential to produce any type of cell the body needs to repair or regenerate its tissues. The Zwaka Lab’s main line of research investigates ways to direct pluripotent stem cells to replace human cells affected by injury or disease. Dr. Zwaka was recruited to Mount Sinai in 2013 to become Professor of Developmental and Regenerative Biology. Within a year, he established the Huffington Foundation Center for Cell-Based Research in Parkinson’s Disease, which he also directs, as a collaborative effort to develop better treatments for this all-too-common neurodegenerative disease.

After earning his MD and Ph.D. degrees from Ulm University in Germany, Dr. Zwaka trained as a cardiologist and discovered the link between C-reactive protein and atherosclerotic inflammation, a connection that has had enormous importance for cardiology. Dr. Zwaka then went to the University of Wisconsin to do his postdoctoral fellowship in the lab of Jamie Thomson, who derived the first human embryonic stem cell line in 1998.

In Thomson’s lab, Dr. Zwaka pioneered methods to genetically manipulate stem cells, resulting in studies noted in publications that have been cited more than a thousand times. He then joined the faculty of Baylor College of Medicine, serving in both the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and in the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy. Within a few years, he became Co-Director of the Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine Center. At Baylor, the Zwaka Lab discovered a key regulator of pluripotency that behaved so differently from canonical stem cell factors that it was named Ronin.