Margaret Goodell

Dr. Margaret (“Peggy”) A. Goodell (born March 23, 1965) is an American scientist working in the field of stem cell research. Goodell is Professor at Baylor College of Medicine and Director of the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine (STaR) Center.^[1] She is best known for her discovery of a novel method to isolate adult stem cells.^[2]

Goodell has been on the faculty of Baylor College of Medicine since 1997 as a member of the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy, and the Departments of Pediatrics, Molecular and Human Genetic, and Immunology.^[3] She holds the Vivian L. Smith Chair in Regenerative Medicine, and has received numerous awards for excellence in teaching and research.^[4]

Goodell is the President of the International Society for Experimental Hematology,^[5] and has served on the board of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. She has also served as the chair of the Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine committee for the American Society of Hematology. She is an Associate Editor for Blood.^[6]

Education

Goodell is the daughter of Joe Goodell, former CEO of American Brass Company. She grew up in Bryan, Ohio with her sisters Marian (a founding board member of the Burning Man^[7] Project and the Director of Business and Communications for Black Rock City, LLC), Martha (a management consultant) and Melly (a physician).^[8][9] She is the niece of Grace Goodell, professor of International Development at The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies ^[10]

Goodell attended Wesleyan University before receiving her B.Sc. at Imperial College of Science and Technology in London, England in 1986 with Honors. She went on to earn her Ph.D. at University of Cambridge in 1991. She completed postdoctoral fellowships at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School.

At MIT, she developed a method for isolating blood-forming stem cells from mouse bone marrow based on a fortuitous observation that stem cells efflux fluorescent lipophillic dyes. This “side population (SP)” method has become widely used to isolate stem cells from a variety of species and adult tissues, including from cancer stem cells.

Career

In 1997, Goodell joined the faculty of the Department of Pediatrics, Molecular and Human Genetics, and Immunology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. She is also a member of the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy. She is also a founding member and the director of the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine (STaR) Center.

Her current research is focused on the mechanisms that regulate hematopoietic stem cells (HSC), and how those regulatory mechanisms go awry in hematologic malignancies. The Goodell Laboratory, which has about 15 students and post-doctoral fellows, studies the effects of stresses, including infection, toxicity and age, on the behavior of HSCs. The lab also looks at stem cell growth control, as well as the regulation of self-renewal and activation.

More than 75 of her peer-reviewed primary research papers have been published in journals including Nature and Blood.

References