Jan Jensen

Jan is an internationally renowned molecular developmental biologist and bioinformatician. He held the Eddie J. Brandon endowed professorship at Cleveland Clinic in Diabetes research. Jan is the founder of Trailhead Biosystems, and has led numerous technology advances related to control of many types of stem cells. He is cited among the top 1% globally for his scientific contributions. 

In addition to his work on our HD-DOE platform and our analytical technologies applied to mapping cellular fate spaces, Jan’s discoveries include the identification of the fourth major autoantigen in diabetes, ZnT8; and the discovery of the mechanism of how insulin producing cells develop in the organism. His broad interest in the fundamental principles in cellular differentiation has provided him a basis for his integrative approaches to complex living systems. 

Jan covers multiple biological specialties through this work, such as precision medicine in cancer combinatorial drug development, anti-viral combinatorial drug development, stem cell differentiation of human cells, and methods development for regenerative medicine and cell-based therapy. Jan has leadership experience within multinational research collaboratives, and more than 25 years of experience in research coordination. 

In his approach to his work, Jan constantly challenges the limitations of the scientific process as it is currently applied believing that system-level interrogations emerge as vastly superior to human-centered hypothesis-driven exploration.