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>> There's really two different types of stem cells.
There's embryonic stem cells, which are found very early
in development and they can give rise to an entire organism
and make all the different types of tissues.
And then there's also adult stem cells,
which are found essentially in every organ and every tissue
within your body and those are responsible for repair
and replacement of those different tissues
within the body.
And my research is focused
on endogenous adult tissue stem cells
that are a normal component of the lung.
And these are the cells that would be responsible for repair
after damaging agents in the lungs such as air pollution
or smoke inhalation from a fire or house fire
or cigarette smoke exposure.
So I'm trying to look at how those cells are involved
in that repair process and what, what makes them become active,
versus remain inactive in a normal, healthy lung.
Stem cell research is really important
because these cells in, in the different tissues
of the body have this ability to repair and restore normal health
to those individual tissues.
And I think if we can understand how they do that,
then we could either develop new drugs which would help us
to activate that process in a person that's ill
that maybe needs a bit of help in that repair
or we can use those endogenous stem cells themselves
as a therapy to try and encourage a repair in someone
that may have lost that stem cell population.
In burn victims, skin stem cells, for about 25 years now,
have been successfully used and that, that saves lives every day
with the stem cell therapy.
And I think we will start to see more of that type of application
where you could take a patient's endogenous stem cells,
expand those, and then use them to help heal the tissue.
I particularly was interested in UCL because of the number
of people and the breadth
of experience that's already present within UCL related
to stem cell research.
And also very specifically, the strong clinical links with UCLH
where we have this potential ability to work very closely
with patients and, and do very fundamental human
based research.
I think funding of stem cell research both at a basic
and right through from a pre-clinical
to a clinical level is, is absolutely vital because that,
that funding at all levels will be what promotes new advances
in the research and will lead to new developments and new drugs
and new therapies within the next probably 20 to 30 years in,
in a number of different organs.
Stem cell research both from the idea of the potential
to identify new targets for drug development
from the biotech industry and also as a potential use
of cell therapies are the best promise
for medicine in the coming years.
And I think that within the next, say 20 to 30 years,
we will have therapies as a direct result
of fundamental stem cell research that's going on now.
So I really, I really think that, you know, funding,
funding at all levels in terms of stem cells will,
will be necessary to lead to new advancements.
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