James Sherley is a biological engineer and the founder of Asymmetrex, an adult stem cell research center. He has also conducted research at the

Boston Biomedical Research Institute Boston Biomedical Research Institute (BBRI) was a non-profit institution concentrating on basic biomedical research to promote the understanding of human diseases (including heart disease, cancer, muscular dystrophy and Alzheimer's etc.). It was ...

and

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(MIT). Sherley filed a suit against the government in '' Sherley v. Sebelius'', resulting in a protracted legal battle attempting to ban the government from funding any research relating to embryonic stem cells.

Early life and education

Sherley's education includes a B.S. from Harvard University and an M.D and a

Ph.D A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...

from

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (JHUSOM) is the medical school of Johns Hopkins University, a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1893, the School of Medicine shares a campus with the Johns Hopkins Hospi ...

, Baltimore, Maryland. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow with

Arnold J. Levine Arnold Jay Levine (born 1939), is an American Molecular biologist. He was awarded the 1998 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize for Biology or Biochemistry and was the first recipient of the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research ...

, at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

, Princeton, New Jersey 1988 to 1991. From 1991 to 1998 he was Associate Member, Division of Medical Science, Molecular Oncology Group,

Fox Chase Cancer Center Fox Chase Cancer Center is a National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center research facility and hospital located in the Fox Chase section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The main facilities of the center are loca ...

, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a professor in Biological Engineering Division at

from 1998 to 2007.

Career

His awards include a 1993 Pew Scholar award and recipient of a 2006 NIH Director's Pioneer Award. In December 2006, Sherley announced he would protest MIT's decision to not grant him tenure by going on a

hunger strike A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke a feeling of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most ...

. He ended the strike 12 days later. He subsequently asserted that he would continue to show up for work on July 1, 2007, despite no longer having a job at MIT on that date. Twenty senior faculty members who participated in evaluation of his tenure case issued a public statement saying that Sherley's evaluation was conducted with integrity and that he was treated fairly. Sherley, an

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

, was one of 23 black professors at MIT. As of October 2006, of the 988 faculty members, 165 or about 17% are ethnic minorities. He has stated that he believes that MIT has not given him the freedom to challenge scientific orthodoxy the way the institution would have for a white colleague. Some other colleagues and professors have defended Sherley, including MIT

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

professor

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...

and

Harvard 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 higher le ...

medical school's

George M. Church George McDonald Church (born August 28, 1954) is an American geneticist, molecular engineer, chemist, and a serial entrepreneur who is widely regarded as the "Founding Father of Genomics", and a pioneer in personal genomics and synthetic bio ...

Frank L. Douglas Frank Lennox Douglas (born April 30, 1943) is a Guyanese-American biomedical researcher and business executive. Education and career Douglas was born April 30, 1943, in Georgetown, Guyana. He graduated with a BS in Engineering from Lehigh Unive ...

, then the director of the Center for Biomedical Innovation, resigned from the university as a result of the handling of the case.

Stem cell research

He is open about his opposition to human

embryonic stem cell research 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 ...

, and instead, Sherley's research focuses on the molecular and biochemical mechanisms of adult stem cells. In 2006 he stated that cloning human embryos was wrong and that the research from embryonic stem cell research would not lead to a cure all. "Despite similar misinformation to the contrary, adult stem cell research is a viable and vibrant path to new medical therapies. Even calling them an alternative to embryonic stem cells misinforms the public." In 2010, Sherley was the named plaintiff in '' Sherley v. Sebelius'' against Kathleen Sebelius, director of HHS, and Francis Collins, director of the NIH, a case challenging federal (

NIH The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

) funding of

that resulted in a suspension of much of the NIH funded research on embryonic stem cells. He fought to ban the NIH from funding any research related to embryonic stem cells, and claimed that the decision of the federal government to pay for research on embryonic stem cells was "essentially robbing him of grant money by increasing the competition for funding". After three years of legal effort, the supreme court refused to overturn a lower judge's ruling against Sherley, allowing research to proceed. Sherley has likened abortion to racism, claiming that it is "discriminating against human embryos, just like there is discrimination against people of different culture and races". While working at the Boston Biomedical Research Institute in 2009, Sherley founded a stem cell research center known as Asymmetrex.

References

External links

Boston Biomedical Research InstituteDiscrimination in Academia
by Frank L. Douglas, the Scientist, July 31, 2007. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Sherley, James Living people People from Massachusetts MIT School of Engineering faculty Johns Hopkins School of Medicine alumni Princeton University fellows Harvard University alumni Year of birth missing (living people) American biomedical engineers American medical researchers