Professor Helen Blau FRS

Helen Blau is renowned for her discoveries regarding reprogramming, regeneration and rejuvenation. She revolutionized our understanding of cell differentiation, stem cells, and aging. Using cell fusion, she overturned the prevailing dogma that the differentiated state is fixed and irreversible, showing how it could be changed.  She demonstrated that aged muscle stem cells are dysfunctional and identified bioengineered substrates and biochemical signals that rejuvenate their function in repairing tissue damage.  Blau transformed our understanding of aging by discovering the first gerozyme, a master regulator of aging, that can be pharmacologically targeted to reverse the debilitating muscle wasting that accompanies disease and aging.

Blau is the Donald E. and Delia B. Baxter Foundation Professor and Director of the Baxter Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology at Stanford University. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine,  American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Inventors, Austrian Academy of Sciences, and Pontifical Academy of Sciences.  She received Honorary Doctorates from University of Nijmegen, Holland, and University of York, England.