Shay Soker Joins CollPlant Scientific Advisory Board

Shay Soker, Ph.D. is the newest member of the advisory board for Ness Ziona, Israel-based CollPlant Ltd.

According to the company, “Prof. Soker brings over 25 years of expertise in the areas of tissue engineering, stem cells, tissue scaffolds, cell differentiation and bioengineering to CollPlant. He currently serves as Professor of Regenerative Medicine and the Scientific Officer for WFIRM. Prof. Soker is an affiliated Professor of Cancer Biology, Physiology & Pharmacology, Biomedical Engineering and Surgical Sciences at the Wake Forest School of Medicine.”

“Prof. Soker received his Ph.D. from the Technion-Israel Institute for Technology and was a postdoctoral trainee in the Department of Surgical Research at the Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.”

“Working with Michael Klagsbrum and the late Judah Folkman, Prof. Soker’s research focused on vascular biology, with emphasis on angiogenic growth factors and their receptors.”

“Prof. Soker joined the Laboratory for Tissue Engineering and Cellular Therapies, under the leadership of Anthony Atala, and was promoted to Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. In 2004, Prof. Soker joined the Wake Forest School of Medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina to launch WFIRM.”

“He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2004 and has been a tenured professor since 2010. Prof. Soker has developed programs in neo-vascularization of bioengineered tissues, stem cell from different sources for tissue engineering in vitro and in vivo and tissue-derived extracellular matrices as scaffolds for whole organ bioengineering. Prof. Soker had published this technology for the engineering of organs and tissues including liver, kidney, pancreas, intestine, cornea and more.”

Professor Soker told OTW, “Joining CollPlant means that I will be a part of an industry that will translate years of research into product manufacturing in order to create regenerative medicine products for the benefit of millions of patients needing tissues and organs. Specifically, I will support CollPlant to lead development of materials and techniques for tissue bioprinting as an industrial approach for creating tissues and organs.”

“I will support CollPlant’s efforts in the area of 3D bioprinting of tissues for regenerative medicine application. Since CollPlant is already active in this space, I will provide specific expertise for bioprinting more complex tissues that will integrate better in the host tissue and speed up the recovery. The next activity will be to identify several clinical indications for CollPlant to focus including orthopedics and skin regeneration.”