Douglas A. Melton


Douglas A. Melton is the Xander University Professor at Harvard University, and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Additionally, Melton serves as the co-director of the and was the first co-chair of the Harvard University . Melton is a founder of several biotech companies including Gilead Sciences, Ontogeny, iPierian, and . Melton holds membership in the National Academy of the Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a founding member of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. With his wife Gail O'Keefe, Melton serves as Faculty Dean of Eliot House, an undergraduate residence at Harvard College.

Education

Melton grew up in Blue Island, Illinois and completed a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1975. He was awarded a Marshall Scholarship for study at the University of Cambridge where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in the History and Philosophy of Science in 1977 and a PhD under the supervision of John Gurdon.

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 vertebrates 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. In the mid-1990s, work in his lab became centered on the development of the pancreas aiming to find new treatments for diabetes.
In 2001 when President George W. Bush cut federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, Melton used private donations to create 17 published stem cell lines and distributed them without charge to researchers around the world.
In August 2008, Melton's lab published successful in vivo reprogramming 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 or the more recently developed induced pluripotent stem cell technique, Melton's method involved direct cell reprogramming of an adult cell type into other adult cell type without reversion to a pluripotent stem cell state.
His current research interests include pancreatic developmental biology and the directed differentiation of human embryonic stem cells, particularly in pertinence to type 1 diabetes. In 2014, he reported a method using human pluripotent stem cells to generate virtually unlimited quantities of 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, which afflicts both his children.

Awards and honors

Melton was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995. In 2007 and again 2009, Melton was listed among Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World. In 2016, Melton was awarded the Ogawa-Yamanaka Prize in Stem Cell Biology.