Professor of Surgery and Regenerative Medicine
Surgery, Wake Forest School of Medicine

Giuseppe Orlando, MD, PhD, Marie Curie Fellow, is professor of surgery at the Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston Salem, North Carolina, in the US, and an abdominal organ transplant surgeon scientist specializing in the transplantation, bioengineering and regeneration of the kidney and endocrine pancreas. He received his MD, general surgery and PhD degrees from the University of Rome, and specialized in abdominal organ transplantation, transplant immunology, regenerative medicine and tissue engineering in Paris, Brussels, Oxford and Winston Salem. He currently serves as the President of CTRMS

CEO, Organamet Bio, Inc

Doris Taylor PhD, FAHA, FACC, FESC, FNAIMBE, NAI is founder and CEO of Organamet Bio – a biotechnology company that harnesses artificial intelligence, biotechnology and regenerative medicine to deliver scalable, personalized therapies for heart disease. Her prior company Miromatrix Medical went public and was acquired in 2023.

As a pioneer and global thought leader in regenerative medicine and organ transplantation science, Taylor is credited with the first scientific repair of heart with stem cells in 1998 and with transforming organ transplantation science and tissue engineering in 2008. Her novel method that makes un-transplantable organs into usable scaffold frameworks for bioengineering new organs is so revolutionary it was recognized as one of the “Top 10 Research Advances” by the American Heart Association and Taylor was nominated as one of “100 most influential people in the world” by Time magazine. However, it wasn’t until Taylor brought machine learning and early versions of AI to re-analysis of clinical trial data that she and her team demonstrated that clinical outcomes in treating heart disease could differ in men and women. When she brought the same knowhow to processes needed to build organs, she condensed a process that should have taken 42 years to about one year. She is the author of over 250 papers and holds over 20 patents. As a result, she frequently appears as an expert on cell therapy, women’s health, cardiac repair, and organ bioengineering/transplant including on a recent White House panel on Biomanufacturing, and a National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine panel on Regenerative Medicine and Women’s Health. Her work has been featured worldwide via media outlets including YouTube, CNN, Forbes, National Geographic, the BBC, PBS NOVA (Transplanting Hope), Discovery Channel (Through the Worm Hole with Morgan Freeman), Science Channel (Stem Cell Universe with Stephen Hawking), NPR (On Being with Krista Tippet), Sanjay Gupta’s Champions for Change among others.

Taylor led academic labs, centers, or departments and garnered tens of millions in funding at Duke University Medical Center, University of Minnesota Medical School, Texas Heart Institute and Texas A&M. In 2021, Taylor co-founded Organamet Bio Inc. whose mission is to bioengineer personalized human hearts within a decade. She has served on numerous think tanks and international scientific executive committees including at the ESC, NIH, FDA, AHA, AABB, the Executive Board of Directors for the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine and Leadership Advisory Council for the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute. She sat for ~2 decades on the international jury for the Institut de France LeFoulon-Delalande Foundation Grand Prix. She currently serves on the Board for

Her motto is, “Build the Future Today – and Do It with Heart.”

Professor of Otolaryngology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science
Chair, Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery/Audiology
Mayo Clinic, Phoenix, USA

Dr. David G. Lott holds the academic rank of Professor of Otolaryngology at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science. He serves as the Chair of the Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery/Audiology at Mayo Clinic Arizona. His practice includes voice and swallowing restoration, laryngeal cancer, and laryngotracheal reconstruction.

Dr. Lott received his M.D. degree at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine and completed a residency in Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery at the Cleveland Clinic Head and Neck Institute. He received further fellowship training in Laryngeal Surgery and Professional Voice at Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital.

Dr. Lott served as the Associate Director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Regenerative Biotherapeutics for 8 years. He is faculty for both the Clinical & Translational Science and Regenerative Sciences tracks within the Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.

In addition, he is the Director of the Head and Neck Regenerative Medicine and Transplantation Program at Mayo Clinic. The primary goal of the program is to establish safe and effective clinical translation of regenerative medicine and transplantation technologies. The team is pioneering tissue-engineered technologies to create patient-specific 3D bioprinted implants for the larynx and trachea. Additionally, the efforts of this program have resulted in the world’s first total larynx transplant in the setting of active cancer.

Throughout his career Dr. Lott has received many awards and honors, including being named in the Top Voice Doctors in America by Billboard Magazine. He received the Mayo Clinic Transform the Practice Award and has been honored with the Mayo Clinic Teacher of the Year Award. Most notably, he is a Mayo Clinic Distinguished Clinician, the highest honor given for clinical excellence.

Dr. Lott is involved with both national and international organizations and is an active member of the American Academy of Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, Triological Society, American Bronchoesophageal Society, American Laryngological Society, and the International Bronchoesophagological Society.

Professor of Regenerative Medicine, Department of Cardiovascular Medicine
Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics
Mayo Clinic in Rochester, NY.
Founder and Chief Executive of Rion Inc.

Dr. Atta Behfar is the Russ and Kathy Van Cleve Professor of Regenerative Medicine, Founder and Chief Executive of Rion Inc. He is a Consultant and Professor of Medicine in the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN with joint appointments in the Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. He is the Director Clinician Investigator Training Program with a clinical focus in heart transplant, mechanical support devices and regenerative biotherapeutic trials. His research focus has been in regenerative medicine for the last 25 years with emphasis on regenerative medicine innovation, pre-clinical translation and industry interaction for trial execution.

Director, Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology
University Medical Center Göttingen
Göttingen, Germany

Wolfram-Hubertus Zimmermann is Professor and Director of the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University Medical Center Göttingen. His research interests include: (1) development and translation of stem cell-based tissue engineered therapeutics; (2) therapeutic genome editing; (3) human engineered tissue and organoids for disease modelling and drug discovery; (4) inter-cellular and inter-organ cross-talk. Major organs/tissue of interest include heart muscle, skeletal muscle, nervous system, and connective tissue. As pioneer in tissue engineering and human pluripotent stem cell research, Zimmermann is the initiator of the first-in-human BioVAT-HF-DZHK20 trial, which is testing tissue engineered heart repair with Engineered Human Myocardium (EHM) from induced pluripotent stem cells in patients with advanced heart failure. With a strong interest in translating academic discoveries into applications in drug discovery and therapy, Zimmermann is an outspoken proponent and developer of new approach methodologies (NAMs). As speaker of the German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK) partner-site Lower Saxony from 2011 to 2026, Zimmermann was instrumental in shaping the research focus on “Heart Failure and Regeneration” of the University Medical Center Göttingen and its interdisciplinary research strategy. As coordinator of several national and international research consortia Zimmermann is pushing the boundaries of todays pharmacological therapies towards precision medicine approaches in inherited and acquired degenerative diseases of the heart, the brain, and the musculoskeletal system. His track record includes >200 publications (H-Index: 72; ~20,000 citations), 17 patents, and the founding of several spin-offs (e.g., Repairon [Heart Repair], Repairon Immuno [Immune Cell Therapies], myriamed [human-centric drug screens and discovery], MyriaMeat [clean edible meat]).