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Five years ago when I when I started here I was very excited to become part of
the Harvard cell institute
it was a large part of the reason I relocated to boston it was the most exciting group of scientist
really organizing together and working together and I was just thrilled to be apart of that
but I don't think I really appreciated how special it would be
and.. I think nobody could have predicted the advances that have been made within
the last five years
Really HNCI investigators have been at the the heart of
major breakthroughs in a whole host of different
stem cell areas weather it be in coming to a better understanding of how
bone marrow stem cells form all the different constituents of the blood
weather or not its gaining wagers important work on the discovery muscle of
muscle precursor cells which are essentially the stem cell of the muscle in which constantly regenerating
every time that we worked out
to of course
the mind-boggling break thoughts in reprograming technology that have occurred over the last five
years
really in in that field and in particular and and in fields of reprograming
and embryonic stem cell biology
I don't think we could have ever imagine that we would be were we are today
certainly reprogram technology is much more accessible then nuclear transfer was
for creating these plurry Colton lines but
in addition i think we've learned a lot about
the adult stem cell how to manipulate those cells
as model of disease as well
so taking what was a disease that you could only study in the body
and translating it into a disease that you can now study in a lavatory dish
and figuring out
drugs and small molecules that will cause those disease cells to act more like normal cells
and then ultimately take those back into patients
i don't think thats all going to happened in five years but i think in the next five years
it's reasonable to expect that for at least for a handful of diseases will be to the first step
in that process
for the last few years stem cell biology have sort have been a discipline unto itself people have been studying the biology
of these cells and most of the focused has been there
and now what we are going to see is a shift towards a broadening a shift towards a stratification where
that technology begins to cuts across classic disciplines and it's going to be in institutions like Harvard
where the stem cell science is strong and where the disciplines are strong in and of them selfs
where you're going to see the most effective implementation of those qualities