Elena V. Gostjeva, Ph.D.

Research Scientist at the Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in USA

​

Dr. Elena V. Gostjeva earned her Ph.D. from the Vavilov Institute of Genetics, Moscow, USSR in 1986. She was then almost immediately  enrolled  in genetic risk assessment at the Chernobyl Radiobiological Expedition led by the Institute of Evolutionary Morphology and Ecology of Animals of the USSR Academy of Sciences. There she and her late husband, Academician Alexi A. Gostev, developed improved (a.)  modes of human tissue preparation for microscopic studies and (b.) high resolution imaging on light microscopes applying artificial intelligence to recognition and elimination of background noise. This work was essential for and led to her later discovery of metakaryotic stem cells. In 1994 she was appointed as the head of the group ‘Genetic Risk Assessment of Chernobyl Fallout’ at the Kiev Polytechnical Institute, Ukraine. She was conducting her research in Ukraine and Uppsala in collaboration with Prof Lars Ehrenberg of the University of Stockholm and Swedish Radiation Protection Institute. There in met 1996  she met and thereafter married Bill Thilly who at MIT had been studying mutation in human somatic tissues. Together they recognized that no one seemed to have found what stem cells in tissues and tumors looked like and started out to try to find them.   In 2003 she discovered the bizarre metakaryotic stem cells that drive the growth of fetal/juvenile organs, wound healing, carcinogenesis, atherosclerosis and restenotic plaque formation.  Together Lena and Bill figured out how to grow and recognize human metakaryotic cancer stem cells in culture, developed quantitative methods for measuring stem cell specific toxicity of drug treatments. They found that standard medical protocols for use of x-rays and standard chemotherapeutic drugs did not kill the metakaryotic stem cells. They then discovered conditions under which a wide range of common medicaments incluiding NSAIDS, antibiotics, anti-hypertennsive agents and anti-diabetes drugs were specifically toxic to metakaryotic cancer stem cells in nculture.  Recently colleagues at the Medical College of Wisconsin have started testing their approach in patients with pancreatic cancer and results innvivo appear to accord with those already observed in cell cultures. 

 

Her papers are available for researchers to download from:  http://mortalityanal;ysis.mit.edu/AAA-METAKARYOTIC-BIOLOGY-PUBS