About the Guest Editor

Dr. **Michael Edel** has specialised his university studies in the basic and fundamental principles of Anatomy, Embryology and Human Physiology, completing his PhD in Pathology in 2000 at the University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia. He moved to Barcelona in 2004, and works with his wife, Dr. Ana Belen Alvarez Palomo, to develop new clinical grade cell reprogramming technology to make stem cells to study and treat human disease.

He is currently a Group Leader/Ramon y Cajal Investigator and accredited Associate Professor, based at the University of Barcelona, Faculty of Medicine. He is a senior researcher in the field of IPSCs, hESC, gene regulation, epigenetics, cell cycle, direct cell reprogramming to neurons, lung or cardiac muscle cells for the use of such cells as a cell replacement therapy. He has 46 publications to date, a book on the state of the art of iPSC technology (Journal of Clinical Medicine, 2015), he is an Editorial Board Member for the *Journal of Clinical Medicine*, ten years post-doctoral experience and five years as a group leader. He is affiliated as a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia, Centre for Cell Therapy and Regenerative Medicine (CCTRM), School of Medicine and Pharmacology, as well as at the University of Sydney, Faculty of Medicine, and Visiting International Research Fellow at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, Sydney, Australia.

Dr. Edel has a number of current research project grants as chief investigator to develop new clinical grade stem cell technology, including a University of Western Australia near miss grant to develop a project on bioengineering cardiac muscle from iPSC to treat heart disease. He has been invited as a guest speaker as part of the distinguished faculty or co-chair for over 20 congresses the past ten years. For more information see his Lab Web Page: http://pluripotencylaboratory.wordpress.com/
