Paul A. De Sousa

I am currently Head of Cell Technologies at Stemmatters. I am a serial founder and Director of human pluripotent stem cell technology companies and former principal investigator at the University of Edinburgh (2005-2021). Following undergraduate and graduate education and postdoctoral training at Universities of Toronto, Western Ontario and Pennsylvania I joined the Roslin Institute as a group leader for Roslin Biomed (1998-2005) a venture capital funded initiative to advance animal cloning technology that had resulted in Dolly the Sheep. Following Biomed’s acquisition by US based Geron my group was among the first internationally to derive human embryo stem cell lines. I co-founded Roslin Cells (2005-2016) establishing Scotland’s advanced stem cell manufacturing capacity and deriving human pluripotent stem cell lines now being for advanced therapies across Europe. Roslin Cells led the formation of the multi-national European Innovative Medicines Initiative to establish the European Bank for Induced Cells (https://ebisc.org/), for which I led the Hot Start of standardised banking and quality control characterisation. I have also co-founded and served as scientific lead and advisor to pluripotent stem cell technology contract research service companies (Roslin Cellab 2006-2015; and Censo Biotechnologies 2016 – 2019; Stroma Therapeutics 2020-).