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James "J." Hickman, Ph.D.

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J Hickman scientist

James "J." Hickman, Ph.D

Chief Scientist

The driving vision of Dr. James (“J”) Hickman is fundamental to Hesperos’ technological “Human-on-a-Chip” platform. He published the first serum-free, defined culture system for neuronal systems in 1995 (Schaffner, Barker et al. 1995) and has now extended this from rat to mouse, both embryonic and adult, as well as to human. J has also pioneered the establishment of functional in vitro systems and was one of the first to report toxicity studies from neurons on microelectrode arrays in a defined system back in the 90’s (Jung, Cuttino et al. 1998).

He has extended these defined in vitro systems now to cardiac, muscle, glia, endothelial, hepatocytes bone marrow, cancer, and epithelial cells. In most cases, the cells have been shown to survive at least 2-3 months in this system while maintaining full functionality.

His work developed a common media system, which supports a wide variety of cells, thus, establishing a common media system for multiple cell types with a high degree of test/retest reliability essential to commercial utility. J received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Chemistry), his M.S. and B.A. from Penn State, he was elected to the Board of Directors of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineers (AIMBE), the premier society for Biomedical Engineering of which he is a Fellow.

Dr. Hickman is the sole or co-inventor on multiple pending and issued U.S. and international patents. He has presented over 135 invited presentations with more than 160 total presentations, as well as over 100 publications and 17 book chapters, in addition to 16 patents.