"Hi there.
My name is Dr. George Murphy.
I'm an assistant professor in medicine in the division of hematology and oncology at
the Boston University School of Medicine and I'm also one of the co-directors of the Boston
University and Boston Medical Center's Center for Degenerative Medicine which we affectionately
refer to as the [unclear 00:00:35].
Basically, we're a bunch of like minded researchers that are interested in all things stem cell,
biology, and regenerative medicine related.
More specifically, what I do and my group does is we're very interested in understanding
exactly how blood cells form in the human body and even more specifically, maybe when
this process goes wrong what actually happens such as in diseases like Sickle Cell Anemia
where red blood cells form improperly and then leading to all sorts of negative downstream
consequences in many different organ systems.
We generally explore these areas of research using really cool stem cell based models,
viruses and vectors that allow us to insert genes into cells themselves, and other really
sort of high tech cell and tissue culture based systems that really allow us to explore
and investigate all these questions that we have.
Around when I was in maybe the fourth grade, I came down with a mysterious illness that
seemingly nobody could decipher.
So during that time after about two years they diagnosed me with a nonspecific autoimmune
disorder but perhaps more impactfully for me, what I really realized during that time
was really how little we knew about the human body and perhaps even more importantly that
this lack of knowledge was directly related to the degree of human suffering that I saw
all around me in the hospital during that time.
So that's when I started to formulate the possibility that maybe I could have a career
in science and medicine and really begin to maybe help to unravel some of these unknowns
to maybe one day be able to ease some of the suffering that I saw during that time period
of my life.
Some of the things that we're actually doing right now today, those stem cells that I told
you about, those [unclear 00:02:28] stem cells that can become any tissue type, we have the
ability to specify them into many different cell types that are found within the body.
And what we're doing right now is something we refer to as the clinical trial in a test
tube or CT3 for short.
What this allows us to do is we can also make these specialized stem cells from patients
with various genetic illnesses.
And we can then take those stem cells and specify them into the tissue type that may
be affected in that particular disease much in the same way as you're going through that
process of specification to these cells we can actually investigate the disease processes
that develop during that process of development.
And at the same time this process of the clinical trial in a test tube allows us to test maybe
novel therapeutics or novel treatments in the exact genetic context of these patients.
So in essence what we can create are patients who are subjects that are actually in a dish
that may have a particular illness or disease and model that particular illness or disease
and at the same time perhaps develop drugs that could actually be used to intercede in
the process of that disease development.
And that's something we're actually doing right now.
In the future, one of the things that my group is working on is the possibility...
So we make blood cells.
We like to actually figure out exactly how blood cells form in the body.
We can actually recapitulate this in a laboratory.
So we can actually go from one of these stem cells into large numbers of say red blood
cells or platelets.
So one of our sort of Apollo mission projects is to be able to actually create clinically
relevant significant numbers of blood cells in the laboratory to obviate the need for
blood cell donation.
So we could actually make theoretically an unlimited supply of blood without issues related
to contamination or supply.
For example, there's a huge dearth of available blood in the third world.
Wouldn't it be great if we could actually make an unlimited supply of blood, blood products,
in the laboratory that could then be used for these types of applications.
So that's one of our long term downstream goals.
I come from a pretty tough underprivileged background and I think many of the kids today
that are in those same circumstances think that a career in science or technologies or
in mathematics is really not something that's reachable or attainable for them.
And I am an example that that is actually not the case and in my estimation, hardship
fosters greatness so what I would say to a kid or a student who is sort of in this type
of situation who doesn't think that these things are accessible is that the one thing
that you should think about is maybe those things are even more accessible to you because
you're battle tested.
You've experienced things that are far more drastic and hard to cope with than maybe your
experiment not working that day.
So maybe you're tough.
Maybe you're perfectly suited for that type of career."