Ann Tsukamoto

Ann Tsukamoto was born in California, in 1952. She attended University of California San Diego, where she earned her undergraduate degree. Tsukamoto then enrolled in University of California Los Angeles, where she earned her Ph. D in immunology and macrobiology.

She moved to University of California, San Francisco, where she worked with the WNT-1 gene, and helped Harold Varmus to create a transgenic model for breast cancer for her postdoctoral studies.

In the early 1990s, she was part of the group of scientists that discovered the human hematopoietic stem cell (blood stem cell).[3] Learning how to isolate stem cells was key to cancer research; while transplanting blood stem cells can replace damaged cells created by cancers such as leukemia.