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Dr. George Smith was appointed NeoStem’s Medical Director of Laboratory Operations, California in January 2006. His responsibilities are to oversee all operations at the Company’s California laboratory, including the processing and storage of autologous adult stem cells procedures, licensing requirements and collection protocols.
After graduation from University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Medical School with five years of specialty training in Pathology in 1965, Dr. Smith spent two years in the Public Health Service assigned to the Atomic Bomb Commission in Hiroshima, Japan. During this assignment, he examined surgical tissue from hospitals all over western Japan and from people who were exposed to radiation from the bombing. He rejoined the UCLA Pathology faculty in 1967 until retirement, in July of 1999. For six years he was Assistant Head of the Blood Bank and Associate Head of Hematopathology where he established a unique bone marrow service in the UCLA Medical Center, and continued to assist in these functions for over 30 years. During these early years, Dr. Smith was a participant in one of the research laboratories, which along with a dozen plus international laboratories, developed and defined the HLA antigen system for tissue transplantation. Dr. Smith was appointed the Director of the UCLA Clinical Laboratories in 1975, which included supervision of 32 patient care laboratories around the Medical Center. During this period he was also the Director of the Blood Bank, Director of the Medical Technologist Training Program and Chief of Clinical Pathology. These responsibilities continued over the next 14 years. Under his tutelage, the Blood Bank was greatly expanded by adding a Blood Donor Center, an apheresis center and new facilities that are all in use today. He initiated a designated donor program, a very active autologous donor program and designed a transfusion safety program. Dr. Smith was directly involved in planning and providing all laboratory and blood services, including bone marrow examinations for the start of the bone marrow and liver transplant programs at UCLA. | 