Promoting the Science of Tissue Regeneration |
2026 ISRB Award Winners These awards will be presented during this year's EMBO Workshop: "The molecular and cellular basis of regeneration and tissue repair" which meets 21 – 25 September 2026 in Krems, Austria. |
ISRB DISTINGUISHED ACHIEVEMENT AWARD Jonathan Slack, Ph.D. Professor University of Bath, UK |
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Jonathan Slack has made many seminal contributions to the field of regeneration over his career, including studies of limb and tail regeneration and the reprogramming of differentiated cell states. His studies of axolotls provided fundamental conceptual and experimental insights into the persistence and role of positional memory in limb regeneration. In Xenopus, Dr. Slack demonstrated the lineage-restricted origins of regenerated tail tissues, defined signaling pathways important for regeneration, and induced regeneration in postmetamorphic limbs by combining transplantation of larval limb progenitor cells with growth factor treatment. His group also demonstrated a conversion of biliary cells in the mouse liver into insulin-secreting duct-like cells through induction of transcription factors in vivo. Dr. Slack has held leadership positions at the University of Bath and as Director of the University of Minnesota Stem Cell Institute, authored influential books on developmental biology and regeneration, and has been a long-standing leader in the field of regeneration.
For more information about the ISRB Distinguished Achievement Award, click HERE.
ISRB RISING STAR AWARD Mekayla Storer, Ph.D. Principal Investigator Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, UK |
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Mekayla Storer has made seminal contributions to the field of mammalian regeneration. Dr. Storer obtained her Ph.D. from the Centre for Genomic Regulation and the University Pompeu Fabra and was a postdoctoral researcher at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, with Freda Miller and David Kaplan. She established her independent research group at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute and the University of Cambridge in 2021, where she focuses her research on mouse digit-tip regeneration. Dr. Storer showed that senescent cells can have an important physiological role in embryonic development and that the senescence-associated secretory phenotype can promote a regenerative state. She demonstrated that tissue-derived mesenchymal cells from multiple tissues could acquire a precursor-like mesenchymal state during blastema formation in mouse digit tip regeneration. In her independent group, she investigated how the physical properties of the extracellular matrix can influence whether mammalian wounds display regeneration or fibrosis. The balance between a collagen matrix and hyaluronic acid can determine outcomes, with a softer hyaluronic acid-rich matrix enabling regeneration. Dr. Storer also stands out as an exceptional contributor to the community of researchers involved in the field of regeneration. For more information about the IRSB Rising Star Award, click HERE. |