Mississippi University for Women, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Known for
regenerative medicine
Scientific career
Institutions
Duke University, Texas Heart Institute
Doris Anita Taylor is an American scientist working in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. She was the Director, Regenerative Medicine Research and Director, Center for Cell and Organ Biotechnology at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston, Texas until March 2020. She is the Co-Founder of Miromatrix Medical, Inc. and
Co-Founder of Organamet Bio, Inc.
Biography
Taylor was born in San Francisco and lived in Germany with her parents and two siblings, where her father was in the military. When Taylor was 6 years old, her father was diagnosed with cancer, and the family moved to Texas to seek medical treatment. Experiencing her father's death from cancer, and caring for her brother, who had schizophrenia, led her to a career in medical research.[1][2]
In 2008, Taylor's team published a paper in Nature Medicine showing that her team could create beating rat hearts using tissue engineering;[5] 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.[6]
Taylor also is conducting research which has uncovered differences in the underlying framework of male and female hearts and other vital organs.[7]