Shoukhrat Mitalipov (ShoKHRAHT Mee-tuhl-EE-pov, Russian: Шухрат Музапарович Миталипов;[1] born 1961)[2] is an American biologist who heads the Center for Embryonic Cell and Gene Therapy at the Oregon Health & Science UniversityinPortland.[3] He is a well known pioneer of many nuclear transplantation studies and was named in 2013 by journal Nature as "the cloning chief".[citation needed] Mitalipov is also a godfather of a gene therapy, known as mitochondrial replacement therapy, that prevents inheritance of mitochondrial diseases. He discovered a new way of creating human stem cells from skin cells.[3][4]
After the military, Mitalipov studied genetics at the Timiryazev Agricultural AcademyinMoscow and also played blues guitar in a cover band to pay the bills.[3] After his graduation from the academy, he worked for a short time as the chief livestock specialist in a kolkhoz in the Yaroslavl region.[6] He received his master's degree in 1989.[3] He earned his PhD in developmental and stem cell biology from the Research Centre of Medical Genetics in Moscow.[3] After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 funding for stem cell research was scarce, so Mitalipov applied for and won a fellowship at Utah State University in 1995.[3] He started working at the Oregon National Primate Research Center in 1998, where he could work with monkeys, which share 98% of their DNA with humans; at Utah State Mitalipov had worked with cow DNA.[3]
A therapy for mitochondrial diseases that Mitalipov discovered, the "spindle transfer" technique, involves removing the nucleus from a human egg and placing it into another.[2][3] If the egg is fertilized, in genetic terms it would have three parents.[3] Mitalipov has successfully bred "three-parent" rhesus macaques.[3] The possibility of using the procedure on human eggs has raised safety and ethics questions.[3]
In May 2013, Mitalipov and his team published a study in Cell that describes a new process for creating human stem cells from skin cells.[4] The stem cell discovery made several journals' "Top 10" scientific breakthrough lists in 2013, including Nature, Science, Time, Discover, National Geographic and The Week.[4]
Mitalipov and his team experimented upon a larger number of human embryos carrying a genetic defect causing heart disease. They demonstrated the possibility of safely and efficiently correcting the defective gene that cause inherited heart disease.[8]
1995 – Fellowship award, Exchange Visitor Program "Cooperation in Applied Sciences and Technologies (CAST)". Development of culture system to maintain pluripotency of bovine embryonic stem cells. Utah State University.
2010 – Recipient of the 2010 Discovery Award, The Medical Research Foundation of Oregon
2010 – Recipient of 2010 Women's Health Research Award, the Center for Women's Health, Circle of Giving
2013 – Recognized by journal Nature as top 10 people who mattered in 2013
2017 – Recipient of "Thousand Talents Plan" Award in China in the category of the Recruitment Program for Foreign Experts[9]
^Астахова, Алла (August 12, 2017). "Тонкая работа". Блог о здравоохранении (in Russian).
^Ma, Hong; Marti-Gutierrez, Nuria; Park, Sang-Wook; Wu, Jun; Lee, Yeonmi; Suzuki, Keiichiro; Koski, Amy; Ji, Dongmei; Hayama, Tomonari; Ahmed, Riffat; Darby, Hayley; Van Dyken, Crystal; Li, Ying; Kang, Eunju; Park, A.-Reum; Kim, Daesik; Kim, Sang-Tae; Gong, Jianhui; Gu, Ying; Xu, Xun; Battaglia, David; Krieg, Sacha A.; Lee, David M.; Wu, Diana H.; Wolf, Don P.; Heitner, Stephen B.; Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, Juan; Amato, Paula; Kim, Jin-Soo; Kaul, Sanjiv; Mitalipov, Shoukhrat (2017). "Correction of a pathogenic gene mutation in human embryos". Nature. 548 (7668): 413–419. doi:10.1038/nature23305. PMID28783728. (This paper currently has an expression of concern, see doi:10.1038/nature23305, PMID28783728, Retraction Watch. If this is an intentional citation to a such a paper, please replace {{expression of concern|...}} with {{expression of concern|...|intentional=yes}}.)
