Doris Taylor: All Heart.

Abstract

There’s an undeniable warmth to Doris Taylor, Director of Regenerative Medicine Research and of the Center for Cell and Organ Biotechnology at the Texas Heart Institute and Texas A&M University in Houston. Professionally, she may be most famous for engineering the first bioartificial mammalian heart.1 But, on a personal level, her own heart is compassionate, generous, and not remotely artificial. Taylor went through great turmoil in early childhood, but rather than mentally closing herself off to pain and difficulty, she’s endeavored throughout life to ease the pain and suffering of others. In a recent interview with Circulation Research , she explained that she does this in two ways. At a community-level, she’s an ardent advocate for social justice, spending her spare time promoting local political organizations and spearheading worthy causes, while at the global-level, her scientific research adds to the body of medical knowledge that enables innovations, improves treatments, and saves lives. Doris Taylor Her research has certainly, and consistently, broken new ground. Her pioneering stem cell research, regenerative medicine strategies, and investigations of sex-specific physiological differences have driven new lines of enquiry in cardiovascular disease research and have also challenged established attitudes toward how such diseases might be treated.2–6 I was born in San Francisco and I had a twin brother. We were born very prematurely and, in those days, premature twins didn’t live, so neither of us were supposed to survive. My mother told us that the doctor came in and told her, if she was religious and believed in doing something for the end of life, she should do it for us. So, she called the hospital chaplain and he came, but then, according to my mother, the minute he left the room, my brother and I rallied. It was as if we’d …