How Stem Cell Research Can Fight Leukemia | Curt Civin, Ph.D. | Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund

Dr. Curt Civin is a pediatric oncologist whose stem cell research has benefited the lives of leukemia patients. As the Director of the Center For Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Associate Dean of Research, he’s been able to advance his lab to make new discoveries in cancer research.
Dr. Civin's stem cell transplant work has extended the lives of patients---one of his patients, "Macy", couldn’t be cured of her resistant leukemia without a stem cell transplant. Her bone marrow stem cell transplant, the reason she is still alive many years later, came from the research he had done in his lab, working with his own hands. Dr. Civin powerfully remarks in this video that research allows him to “extend my hands as a doctor to be able to reach out to the world". Macy represents thousands of patients helped by progress in stem cell research.
New discoveries in his lab are the result of grants he received from the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund (MSCRF). With this funding, his team was able to make an important discovery that identified a small set of snippets of microRNAs that regulate large molecules in stem cells. This discovery allowed his team to discover new drugs that are being tested as treatments for leukemia.
Cancer kills approximately 600,000 patients every year. Leukemias are a portion of this total, but Dr. Civin shares in this video that he has a strong reason to believe the drugs they are developing will work for other types of cancers, beyond leukemias.
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Dr. Civin credits his research success in helping extend the lives of patients to the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund. He shares in this video the opportunities they are providing young researchers.
“The Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund is supporting many new studies which are making fundamental discoveries that will lead, eventually, to advances in patients.”
Dr. Civin thinks one of the best things about the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund is that young scientists can apply and win grants. He noted young researchers from the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins received funding for their early research that showed promise and today they are distinguished principal investigators helping to advance cures.
The Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund helped launch these scientists in Maryland and kept them in the State by supporting their research. He noted the Fund “is the catalyst to get the fire going that will build into the productive engine to take us all the way to solutions that will help people...that is the most rewarding thing for all of us and it would be the greatest thing for Maryland.”
Learn more about the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund: www.mscrf.org/
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