Shoukhrat Mitalipov

Shoukhrat Mitalipov (, ; born 1961) is an American biologist who heads the Center for Embryonic Cell and Gene Therapy at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. He is a well known pioneer of many nuclear transplantation studies and was named in 2013 by journal Nature as "the cloning chief". Mitalipov is also a godfather of a gene therapy, known as mitochondrial replacement therapy, that prevents inheritance of mitochondrial diseases. He discovered a new way of creating human stem cells from skin cells.

Early life Mitalipov was born in 1961 in Almaty, Kazakhstan, then part of the Soviet Union. He served two years in Soviet military, beginning in 1979, as an army radio technician. He received his master's degree in 1989. performed the first known successful attempt at genetically correcting mutant human embryos, using the CRISPR/Cas9 gene modifying tool.

Mitalipov and his team experimented upon a larger number of human embryos carrying a genetic defect causing heart disease. They demonstrated the possibility of safely and efficiently correcting the defective gene that cause inherited heart disease.

Honors and awards

1995 – Fellowship award, Exchange Visitor Program "Cooperation in Applied Sciences and Technologies (CAST)". Development of culture system to maintain pluripotency of bovine embryonic stem cells. Utah State University. 2010 – Recipient of the 2010 Discovery Award, The Medical Research Foundation of Oregon 2010 – Recipient of 2010 Women's Health Research Award, the Center for Women's Health, Circle of Giving 2013 – Recognized by journal Nature as top 10 people who mattered in 2013 2017 – Recipient of "Thousand Talents Plan" Award in China in the category of the Recruitment Program for Foreign Experts

Salient publications

— Widely cited including by: