Elly Tanaka
Elly Margaret Tanaka is a biochemist and Scientific Director at the Institute of [Molecular Biotechnology |Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences] at the Vienna Biocenter, Austria. Tanaka studies the molecular cell biology of limb and spinal cord regeneration as well as the evolution of regeneration.
Early life and education
Tanaka was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and obtained a bachelor's degree in biochemistry from Harvard University in 1987 and a PhD from the University of California, San Francisco in 1993, where she had worked in the lab of Marc W. Kirschner. She then became a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Jeremy Brockes at University College London and Ludwig Institute.Research and career
Tanaka started her own lab at the Max Planck Institute of [Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics] in Dresden in 1999. Her research focused on axolotl spinal cord regeneration.In 2008, Tanaka became a professor at the Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden of the Technische Universität Dresden. She became director of the center in 2014, before becoming senior scientist at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna in 2016. In 2024, Tanaka joined the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences as Scientific Director.
The Mexican salamander species axolotl is Tanaka's main model system for her research and is also working to translate them to mouse and human tissue. Using innovative molecular biology and microscopy methods, she identified those stem cells that underlie the regeneration of limbs and the spinal cord.
She is a member of the Editorial Board for Developmental Cell.