Stephen Johnston's Biography

Stephen Johnston, Director, Arizona State University

Dr. Johnston co-directs the Center for Innovations in Medicine (CIM) at the Biodesign Institute. CIM is unique in its focus on inventing disruptive technologies in biomedicine. The mission is to contribute to the transformation of medicine through technologies that allow prevention, early detection and new therapeutic treatment of disease. Toward this goal CIM is focusing on developing three of his inventions. One project is to create a universal, preventative cancer vaccine. A second is to develop a system for continuous, comprehensive, cheap health monitoring. The third is based on an invention for making new therapeutics and targeted anti-infectives. Johnston largely focuses on invention. He was inventor/ co-inventor of pathogen derived resistance, mitochondrial transformation, TEV protease system, the gene gun, gene immunization, expression library immunization, linear expression elements, synbodies and immunosignaturing. He was professor and director of the Center for Biomedical Inventions at UT-Southwestern Medical Center and Professor of Biology and Biomedical Engineering at Duke University before moving to ASU.