The Daily Thanks to a large grant to the UW School of Medicine, patients may soon be able to regenerate certain organs. The grant is one of four given out nationwide. The most immediate effect of the grant, Stamatoyannopoulos said, will be the ability of the center to do more clinical research. Stamatoyannopoulos said sickle-cell anemia, an abnormality of red blood cells which causes severe pain in its sufferers, can be alleviated with gene therapy, as can many hemopoeitic illnesses.
Hemopoeitic illnesses are diseases affecting the organs that make blood.
Stamatoyannopoulos theorizes that, with more research, the hemopoeitic diseases can be cured, by creating new hemopoeitic stem cells, the cells that change into blood, brain or muscle cells. The new cells can then replace the diseased cells. Through these sessions, Stamatoyannopoulos said, the patient will eventually be cured. An important recent discovery, that of stem-cell plasticity, has led researchers to believe there are infinite possibilities for gene therapy. Stem-cell plasticity means cells that are normally muscle or brain cells can be made into ones that create blood, as a bone marrow cell would do.