Doris A. Taylor, PhD, FAHA, FACC
Doris A. Taylor, Ph.D., FACC, FAHA is the Director, Regenerative Medicine Research and Director of the Center for Cell and Organ Biotechnology at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston. She holds faculty appointments at both Texas A&M and Rice University and is a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology; American Heart Association and the Council on Functional Genomics and Translational Biology, among others.
Taylor earned her B.S. from Mississippi University for Women in Biology and Physical Sciences in 1977 and earned her PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas in 1987. During her post-doctoral studies at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York, she first worked with regenerative medicine strategies, growing heart muscle cells in the laboratory and working on gene therapy projects.
Before joining THI in 2012, Dr. Taylor directed the Center for Cardiovascular Repair at the University of Minnesota. She also held academic appointments as the Medtronic Bakken Chair of Integrative Biology and Physiology and Professor of Medicine. Taylor came to the University of Minnesota from Duke University Medical School, where she was on the faculty from 1991 to 2007 and described the first ever functional repair of injured heart with stem cells.
An educator with more than 25 years of teaching experience, she is truly committed to moving innovative therapies from bench to bedside, while preparing students/fellows to compete at an international level in the field of cardiac and vascular repair and regeneration.
Dr. Taylor has published extensively, authoring or co-authoring more than 120 scientific publications. She has been recognized for breakthrough research related to cell therapy, stem cell biology, and tissue engineering based therapies as well as for evaluating differences in male and female stem cells and regenerative medicine strategies. She holds a number of invention disclosures, patent applications and patents. One of the most notable discoveries laid the groundwork for her research at THI that holds promise for patients with no other option but a heart transplant. In 2008, Taylor's team published a paper in Nature Medicine showing that they could create beating rat hearts using tissue engineering; the work was called a "landmark." The lab first stripped the cells away from a rat heart (a process called "decellularization") and then injected rat stem cells into the decellularized rat heart. Taylor also is conducting research which has uncovered differences in the underlying framework of male and female hearts and other vital organs.
Today, in addition to her research director responsibilities at THI, she co-directs the Cardiovascular Cell Therapy Research Network (CCTRN) Biorepository and leads a cell and cytokine profiling core lab that serves multiple NIH, National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) networks, medical centers, and research foundations in the US and Canada.
Dr. Taylor frequently appears as an expert on stem cell therapy and cardiac repair in the media and in the scientific arena. Her work has been recognized and featured since 1998 by 60 Minutes, CNN, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BBC Horizon, BBC News Health, ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, Associated Press, National Public Radio, Good Morning America, Forbes, the Oprah Winfrey Show, NOVA Science Now, Discovery Channel Through the Worm Hole with Morgan Freeman, Science Channel STEM CELL UNIVERSE with Stephen Hawking, Huffington Post (Canada), The Independent and numerous other worldwide media outlets.
From cells to organs, Dr. Taylor is leading international regenerative medicine research efforts creating cutting edge therapies for chronic disease and “building the future treatments of tomorrow – today” at the Texas Heart Institute.
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