Elly M. Tanaka

Biosketch

Elly Tanaka is a Senior Scientist at the Institute for Molecular Pathology, Vienna and Honorary Professor of Animal Models of Regeneration at the Technische Universität Dresden. She received her AB at Harvard, her PhD at University of California, San Francisco and post-doctoral work at University College London. She became groupleader at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics Dresden then Professor at the Technische Universität Dresden where from 2014-2016 was the Director of the Center for Regenerative Therapies. She is a member of EMBO and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and has been awarded the Schering Prize, the Schroedinger Prize and the FEBS/EMBO Women in Science Prize among others for her work.

Research Interests

Dr. Tanaka's work has focused on developing molecular genetics to understand the fundamental principles of limb and spinal cord regeneration using in the highly regenerative salamander, Amybstoma mexicanum. She has developed transgenic methods to identify the source cells for regeneration. She has used a variety of biochemical and genetic screening methods to identify molecular cues that initiate and control the regenerative process. She currently works on the molecular basis of cellular dedifferentiation, and on the induction of morphogen signalling during regeneration. She is also applying these principles to reconstituting mammalian tissues.