Lauren Woodard

Dr. Lauren Woodard is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Nephrology and Hypertension at Vanderbilt University Medical Center as well as Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt University. Her lab engineers gene and cell therapies for kidney regeneration with a focus on renal stem and progenitor cells and their extracellular vesicles or exosomes for kidney regeneration. She is also interested in cellular reprogramming techniques with piggyBac transposons. During her graduate training at Stanford University with Dr. Michele Calos and her postdoctoral fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine with Dr. Matthew Wilson, Dr. Woodard pioneered studies exploring the safety and utility of genome-integrating systems for long-term nonviral transgene expression. She was Chair of the Nonviral Therapeutic Delivery Committee of the American Society of Gene + Cell Therapy from 2023-2025 which covered the large-scale manufacturing and therapeutic delivery of exosomes.