Melton, Doug

DOUGLAS MELTON IS currently a leading embryonic stem cell researcher and the Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor in the Natural Sciences at Harvard University. In addition, Doug Melton is the codirec—tor of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, chair of the Life Sciences Council at Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and since 1994, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. He received his bachelor's of science degree in biology, Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Illinois, Urbana, in 1975 and a bachelor's of arts from Cambridge University in history and the philosophy of science as a Marshall Scholar. He also received his doctoral degree from Cambridge University, at Trinity College, under the supervision of J. B. Gurdon and while working in the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences (since 1995), the Institute of Medicine (2001), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1995).

Melton's research aims to understand how human stem cells become different types of tissues, particularly the pancreas and its insulin—producing beta cells. Melton began as a scientific researcher studying development, RNA processing, and translation in frog (Xenopus laevis) oocytes. However, in 1993, when his infant son was diagnosed [Page 330]with type 1 diabetes mellitus, a disease in which the insulin—producing cells of the pancreas are destroyed, Melton changed his research's direction to address the development of vertebrate organs from stem cells. His son and daughter are now in their teens, and both are affected by this disease; as diabetics, they are at risk of future blindness, organ failure, and heart disease. Melton has been quoted in an interview in the New York Times saying, “Like any parent, I asked myself, ‘What can I do?’ … I wanted my children to know I was doing everything I could for them.” An ultimate goal of his work is to make transplantable pancreatic tissue for diabetic patients by understanding how the pancreas develops and how to instruct embryonic stem cells to make pancreatic tissue.