
Dr. Avnesh Thakor
Clinical Advisor
Dr. Thakor is an Attending Interventional Radiologist who runs his own translational laboratory at Stanford University investigating the use of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) based therapies (which includes both the parent cell and their extra-cellular vesicles (EVs)), for multiple disease states given their anti-inflammatory, pro-angiogenic and immunomodulatory properties. In particular, Dr. Thakor’s team has been focusing on pancreatic regeneration, islet transplantation, kidney regeneration and neuronal regeneration.
His work focuses on understanding the genomic and proteomic profiles of different sources of MSCs and their derived EVs, developing novel strategies to deliver and home these MSC-based therapies to target tissues, using focused ultrasound to optimize the injured tissue microenvironment for these therapies and then imaging the biodistribution of MSCs with novel imaging probes. By translating stem cell therapies into patients using minimally invasive strategies, his team is leading the efforts in a new emerging field called “Interventional Regenerative Medicine (IRM)”. In addition, his team has been developing multi-functional bioscaffolds and nanoplatforms to facilitate the clinical translation of different cellular therapies.
