Douglas A. Melton is an American medical researcher who is the Xander University Professor at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

, and was an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute until 2022. Melton serves as the co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and was the first co-chairman (with David Scadden) of the Harvard University Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology. Melton is the founder of several biotech companies including

Gilead Sciences Gilead Sciences, Inc. () is an American biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Foster City, California, that focuses on researching and developing antiviral drugs used in the treatment of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, influenza, and C ...

, Ontogeny (now Curis), iPierian (now True North Therapeutics ), and Semma Therapeutics. Melton holds membership in the National Academy of the Sciences, the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

, and is a founding member of the

International Society for Stem Cell Research The International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Skokie, Illinois, United States. The organization's mission is to promote excellence in stem cell science and applications to hum ...

. Fox, Michael J. (May 3, 2007)
"The 2007 Time 100: Douglas Melton"
''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...

''.

Education

Melton grew up in

Blue Island, Illinois Blue Island is a city in Cook County, Illinois, located approximately south of Chicago's Loop. Blue Island is adjacent to the city of Chicago and shares its northern boundary with that city's Morgan Park neighborhood. The population was 22,55 ...

and completed a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University o ...

degree in biology at the

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univer ...

in 1975.Doug Melton's Curriculum Vitae
/ref> He was awarded a

Marshall Scholarship The Marshall Scholarship is a postgraduate scholarship for "intellectually distinguished young Americans ndtheir country's future leaders" to study at any university in the United Kingdom. It is widely considered one of the most prestigious sc ...

for study at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

where he received a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four year ...

degree in the history and philosophy of science in 1977 and a PhD under the supervision of

John Gurdon Sir John Bertrand Gurdon (born 2 October 1933) is a British developmental biologist. He is best known for his pioneering research in nuclear transplantation and cloning. He was awarded the Lasker Award in 2009. In 2012, he and Shinya Yamanaka ...

Career and research

Melton's early work was in general developmental biology, identifying genes important for cell fate determination and body pattern. This led to the finding that the nervous system in

vertebrate Vertebrates () comprise all animal taxa within the subphylum Vertebrata () (chordates with backbones), including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Vertebrates represent the overwhelming majority of the phylum Chordata, with c ...

s is formed as a default when early embryonic cells do not receive inductive signals to become mesoderm or endoderm. He also pioneered the technique of ''in vitro'' transcription with bacterial SP6 RNA polymerase. This RNA transcription system is now widely used to make large amounts of messenger RNAs in vitro and is, for example, the basis for production of the COVID mRNA vaccines. In the mid-1990s, work in his lab became centered on the development of the

pancreas The pancreas is an organ of the digestive system and endocrine system of vertebrates. In humans, it is located in the abdomen behind the stomach and functions as a gland. The pancreas is a mixed or heterocrine gland, i.e. it has both an en ...

aiming to find new treatments for diabetes. In 2001 when President

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...

cut federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, Melton used private donations to create 17 published human stem cell lines and distributed them without charge to researchers around the world. In August 2008, Melton's lab published successful

in vivo Studies that are ''in vivo'' (Latin for "within the living"; often not italicized in English) are those in which the effects of various biological entities are tested on whole, living organisms or cells, usually animals, including humans, and ...

reprogramming In biology, reprogramming refers to erasure and remodeling of epigenetic marks, such as DNA methylation, during mammalian development or in cell culture. Such control is also often associated with alternative covalent modifications of histones. ...

of adult mice exocrine pancreatic cells into insulin secreting cells which closely resembled endogenous islet beta cells of the pancreas in terms of their size, shape, ultrastructure, and essential marker genes. Unlike producing beta cells from conventional

embryonic stem cells Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are pluripotent stem cells derived from the inner cell mass of a blastocyst, an early-stage pre- implantation embryo. Human embryos reach the blastocyst stage 4–5 days post fertilization, at which time they consist ...

or the more recently developed

induced pluripotent stem cell Induced pluripotent stem cells (also known as iPS cells or iPSCs) are a type of pluripotent stem cell that can be generated directly from a somatic cell. The iPSC technology was pioneered by Shinya Yamanaka's lab in Kyoto, Japan, who showed in ...

(iPSC) technique, Melton's method involved direct cell reprogramming of an adult cell type (exocrine cell) into other adult cell type (beta cell) without reversion to a pluripotent stem cell state. His current research interests include pancreatic developmental biology and the directed differentiation of human

embryonic stem cell Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are pluripotent stem cells derived from the inner cell mass of a blastocyst, an early-stage pre- implantation embryo. Human embryos reach the blastocyst stage 4–5 days post fertilization, at which time they consist ...

s, particularly in pertinence to

type 1 diabetes Type 1 diabetes (T1D), formerly known as juvenile diabetes, is an autoimmune disease that originates when cells that make insulin (beta cells) are destroyed by the immune system. Insulin is a hormone required for the cells to use blood sugar ...

. In 2014, he reported a method using human pluripotent stem cells to generate virtually unlimited quantities of functional insulin-producing beta cells that respond appropriately to a glucose challenge. This is considered a significant step forward in regenerative medicine for the possible treatment of diabetes, including

type I diabetes Type 1 diabetes (T1D), formerly known as juvenile diabetes, is an autoimmune disease that originates when cells that make insulin (beta cells) are destroyed by the immune system. Insulin is a hormone required for the cells to use blood sugar for ...

, which afflicts both his children. In 2022, Melton left

and joined

Vertex Pharmaceuticals Vertex Pharmaceuticals is an American biopharmaceutical company based in Boston, Massachusetts. It was one of the first biotech firms to use an explicit strategy of rational drug design rather than combinatorial chemistry. It maintains headqu ...

full-time to create diabetes treatments.

Awards and honors

Melton was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the

in 1995. In 2007 and again in 2009, Melton was listed among the ''Time'' 100 Most Influential People in the World. In 2016, Melton was awarded the Ogawa-Yamanaka Prize in Stem Cell Biology.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Melton, Douglas 1953 births Living people American medical researchers University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni Richard-Lounsbery Award laureates Harvard University faculty Marshall Scholars Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Howard Hughes Medical Investigators Stem cell researchers Male feminists People from Blue Island, Illinois Members of the National Academy of Medicine Searle Scholars Program recipients