About Us

StemCardia’s mission is to dramatically improve the standard of care for tens of millions of patients suffering from heart failure, the leading cause of death worldwide. To achieve this, we are assembling a team of leading scientific, clinical, and manufacturing experts.

Our team has decades of published research demonstrating the potency of transplanted pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiac muscle cells to re-muscularize the failing heart, and we are advancing a pipeline of cell & gene therapies engineered to repair the heart.

  • Chuck Murry, MD, PhD

    CEO

    Chuck Murry, MD, PhD, a physician-scientist and pioneer in heart regeneration, is CEO of StemCardia. Dr. Murry is the Director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC, and the Chair of the Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. Prior to joining USC, Murry was a Professor of Laboratory Medicine & Pathology, Bioengineering and Medicine/Cardiology and the Director of the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine (ISCRM) at the University of Washington. Previously Dr. Murry served as Senior Vice-President at Sana Biotechnology to establish clinical-grade induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) based cardiac cell manufacturing.

  • Lil Pabon, PhD

    COO

    Lil Pabon, PhD is COO of StemCardia. A developmental biologist by training, Dr. Pabon has over 18 years’ experience with human pluripotent stem cells and their application towards cardiovascular regenerative medicine. As a Senior Scientist and Research Operations Director she helped establish the scientific foundation for the Heart Regeneration Program at the University of Washington (UW). At Sana Biotechnology, Dr. Pabon served as Head of Research Operations, Cell Therapy until co-founding StemCardia to develop next generation cell-based cardiac therapies targeting heart disease.

  • Carter Cliff

    President

    Carter Cliff is President of StemCardia. He has raised over $250 Million as co-founder and executive of biotechnology companies developing disease-modifying genetic medicines, including Opsis Therapeutics and Kenai Therapeutics. Opsis entered a Strategic R&D Alliance with BlueRock Therapeutics (a Bayer AG company), who provided a $70 Million up-front commitment for option to three programs. Kenai raised an $83 Million Series A financing co-led by Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation, Cure Ventures and The Column Group, with participation from Euclidean Capital and Saisei Ventures.

  • Robb MacLellan, MD

    Medical Advisor

    Robb MacLellan, MD, is a medical advisor to StemCardia, and serves as the Robert A. Bruce Professor of Medicine and Executive Vice-Chair of the Department of Medicine at UW. He led the Cardiology Division at UW from 2011-23. Dr. MacLellan serves as the Director of the UW Medicine Heart Institute, a multi-disciplinary service line with four hospitals and 4 additional satellite clinics. His clinical expertise is in heart failure, and is a prominent investigator in cardiovascular regenerative medicine serving as the co-Director of the UW Heart Regeneration Program. His research focuses on developing new therapies to regenerate the heart for patients who have suffered a heart attack or developed heart failure.

  • Michael Regnier, PhD

    Scientific Advisor

    Michael Regnier, PhD, is a scientific advisor to StemCardia. He is the Associate Chair for Research and Development in the Department of Bioengineering at University of Washington (UW) and the founding director of the Center for Translational Muscle Research and Bioengineering Cardiovascular Training Program. His research program is multidisciplinary in nature and has been consistently funded by the National Institutes of Health and other public and private agencies for over 25 years to study contractile dysfunction that occurs with heart and skeletal muscle diseases. The results of studies are used to design and develop gene and engineered stem cell approaches to treat these muscle diseases.

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