University loses famed researcher to Texas Heart Institute

Doris Taylor, the researcher who rose to prominence by creating a functioning rat heart in a laboratory, is leaving the University of Minnesota.

On March 1, Taylor will begin work at the Texas Heart Institute — a nonprofit cardiology and heart surgery center in Houston.

In 2008, Taylor and her team managed to coax a dead rat heart to function again by draining it of its cells and infusing the leftover “scaffold” with cells from newborn rats. The heart beat for 40 days.

She has since worked with collegues in Spain to recreate the process with the human heart.

The University Office for Technology Commercialization signed an agreement to license the technique to Miromatrix Medical Inc. in February 2010 in hopes of marketing a series of medical technology devices based on the research. Later that year, Taylor was ousted from the company by its board of directors. The University, a major shareholder in the company, supported the decision.

“I was disappointed that an institution that I value and that I’ve been asked to represent nationally and internationally didn’t feel the same [about me],” Taylor told the Minnesota Daily in April 2011.

In an interview with the Star Tribune, Taylor acknowledged her removal from Miromatrix was a factor in her decision to relocate. But in a Tuesday interview with the Minnesota Daily, she said as a shareholder in the company she hopes for its success.

“Obviously if I were closely tied to the technology in Minnesota it would be more compelling to stay here,” she said. “But I have a great opportunity, and I wish the company well; I wish the University well.”

Texas Heart Institute spokesman Frank Michel  said that the institute recruited Taylor, who has received many job offers since she came to the University eight years ago.

“That’s part of academia and part of having a positive reputation in your field,” Taylor said.

But she said she has known some of her colleagues at the institute for years, and they have often brought up the possibility with her though, up until recently, it was “only just conversation.” Michel said the institute has been in discussions with Taylor for a few months.

Michel said Taylor’s exact position at the institute hasn’t been determined but she will continue to do the kind of work she did at the University as the head of the Center for Cardiovascular Repair. Taylor’s work is one of the first steps toward being able to regrow human organs using stem cells.

“We’re doing a lot of work with regenerative medicine and stem cells and so forth, and so we’re recruiting top scientists to help with that program,” he said.

Miromatrix currently owns the rights to the recellularization technique Taylor uses in her research at the University. There are many groups doing that type of research, she said, and “they’re not precluded from doing it.”

“I’ll have the same degree of freedom as anyone else in the world with regard to anything that’s been created in Minnesota or licensed,” she said.

In a statement to her colleagues last week, Taylor said she will continue to collaborate with researchers at the University.

Angela Panoskaltsis-Mortari, a pediatrics professor, is doing similar research to Taylor’s, but focusing on the lungs rather than the heart. She has partnered with Taylor for nearly two years. A few months ago, the pair received a $2.8 million National Institutes of Health grant for bioengineering a human lung using adult stem cells.

“We had a very fruitful collaboration and we’re going to continue that — so that’s not going to stop for me, on my end,” Panoskaltsis-Mortari said. “But I think it’s a loss to future investigators who would want to come to work at the University of Minnesota because [Taylor] is –– was –– here.”

Panoskaltsis-Mortari said Taylor’s departure is also an opportunity for Taylor herself and those investigators she will now have a chance to work with, which “on a whole is good for science.”

“I think it’s good for where she’s going, and it’s good for somebody who maybe steps in here,” she said. “Part of the legacy that she’s leaving here is that this is where this work began and that will continue.”