Lawrence Stanton's Biography

Lawrence Stanton, Associate Director, Genome Institute of Singapore

Lawrence Stanton joined the Genome Institute of Singapore in 2002, where he serves as an Associate Director. He holds Adjunct Professorships at the Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, and School of Biological Sciences, Nanyang Technological University. His current research is focused on the molecular characterization of transcriptional regulatory networks in stem cells and disease-specific iPSC cells with the aim to direct the growth, differentiation, and reprogramming of these cells into therapeutically useful tissues and models of human diseases. Recently, the lab has been generating induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) from patients with neurological disorders. These patient-specific iPSC are then converted into various neural cell types, which provides us the opportunity to study diseased neural tissue in vitro. By generating “micro-tissues” of neural origin by bioengineering multiple cell types in 3-D on biocompatible materials his group is collaborating with clinical and industrial partners to understand the molecular basis of neurological diseases and to discover therapeutic modalities to treat such disorders. He began his studies on differentiation of human embryonic stem cells while Director of Functional Genomics at Geron Corporation. Prior to that, he worked at Agilent Technologies and Scios Inc, where he held senior research and management positions in drug discovery. He has authored more than 80 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals, is an inventor on 11 patents, an active member of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR), is on the editorial board for the journals Stem Cells and Current Molecular Medicine, and serves on the Executive Committee of the Stem Cell Society of Singapore. In 2011, together with colleagues from GIS, he was awarded the prestigious President’s National Science Award (Singapore).