Dana Larocca's Biography

Dana Larocca, VP Discovery Research, AgeX Therapeutics

Dana Larocca is Vice President of Discovery Research at AgeX Therapeutics. Her current research is focused on development of iTR (induced Tissue Regeneration) by re-activating embryonic pathways using genetic approaches and EV transfer. She has over 20 years of leadership experience in the Biotechnology Industry working in regenerative medicine, stem cell research and gene therapy. She founded Mandala Biosciences, LLC and as Chief Executive Officer, raised over $3M in non-dilutive funding from SBIR and CIRM grants aimed at stem cell identification and purification using targeted nanoparticles. Dr. Larocca previously held joint positions at Advanced Cell Technology (now Astellas) and the Sanford Burnham Medical Research Institute. She is author of 43 scientific publications and inventor of 25 patents and patent applications in the fields of regenerative medicine, gene therapy, and immunotherapy. Dr. Larocca holds a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Southern California and a B.S. in Biology from Ithaca College. She did her post-doctoral training at Harvard University.

Induced Tissue Regeneration (iTR) Using Extracellular Vesicles

Thursday, 28 March 2019 at 14:00

Add to Calendar ▼2019-03-28 14:00:002019-03-28 15:00:00Europe/LondonInduced Tissue Regeneration (iTR) Using Extracellular VesiclesExtracellular Vesicle-based Dx and Rx Summit in Coronado Island, CaliforniaCoronado Island, CaliforniaSELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com

There is a critical unmet medical need for new therapies to treat age-related diseases given the increasing burden of a global demographic shift toward older populations. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) have been demonstrated to be largely responsible for the regenerative effects of stem cells in a variety of animal models of age-associated diseases including cardiovascular diseases. We hypothesize that EVs made by cells from early human development will convey strong regenerative signals because this is when regenerative capacity is at its peak. We used partial differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells to derive a large library of highly scalable and clonally pure embryonic progenitor cell lines. Over 200 progenitor lines were originally established to meet the high demands of cell purity and scalability needed to treat a large aging population. We are now mining this diverse library of cell lines for their ability to provide a scalable source of highly regenerative EVs. We found that embryonic progenitor derived EVs had higher angiogenic activity than adult stem cell derived EVs. Moreover, angiogenic activity was maintained by EVs produced by cells at up to at least 52 population doublings and following bioreactor scale-up. We are currently mapping bioactivity and cargo of EVs derived from a variety of embryonic cell types including endothelial, pericyte, smooth muscle, osteochondral and brown adipocyte progenitors. We anticipate that the resulting library of diverse embryonic EVs will be a valuable resource for developing EV therapies for cardiovascular and other age-related diseases.

Add to Calendar ▼2019-03-28 00:00:002019-03-28 00:00:00Europe/LondonExtracellular Vesicle-based Dx and Rx SummitExtracellular Vesicle-based Dx and Rx Summit in Coronado Island, CaliforniaCoronado Island, CaliforniaSELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com

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