UF scientist awarded $1.5 million to research stem cells

Backed by new federal grants totaling more than $1.5 million, a University of Florida College of Medicine researcher will work to expand understanding about the capability of bone marrow-derived stem cells to become functioning liver and pancreatic cells.

The research has potential to help treat liver diseases and diabetes.

The National Institutes of Health recently awarded Bryon E. Petersen, Ph.D., an assistant professor of pathology, immunology and laboratory medicine, $1.25 million over the next four years to define the type of bone marrow stem cell that has the greatest capacity to become functioning liver cells.

The work is an extension of Petersen’s 1999 discovery that bone marrow stem cells can differentiate into functioning liver cells capable of correcting various metabolic diseases. Stem cells can act as blueprints for all the cells of the body. In recent years, scientists have discovered that stem cells have the ability to convert into many different types of cells - muscle, nerve, heart, blood cells and others. Petersen researches “adult” stem cells rather than the embryonic stem cells that President Bush recently agreed to provide limited federal funding to study.

Petersen also will investigate whether the liver produces signals to summon bone marrow stem cells to an injured liver in order to help repair damaged tissue and accelerate the conversion of bone marrow stem cells into functioning liver cells.

The studies may someday lead to the ability to treat liver failure patients with their own stem cells, which could reduce the number needing transplants and potentially diminish the likelihood of rejection associated with replacing the whole organ. New treatment approaches are needed given the rising rates of liver disease. The supply of donor organs far outstrips demand. More than 18,000 people are waiting for liver transplants, but last year fewer than 5,000 operations were performed.

For a second project, Petersen will receive $290,000 over the next two years to study the role bone marrow stem cells play in the development of the pancreas and its insulin-producing islet cells, and in repair of the organ after injury.

Petersen is trying to determine whether bone marrow-derived stem cells are capable of becoming pancreatic islet cells that can produce insulin. If so, such cells may one day play a part in treating or even curing type 1 diabetes.

Both grants were awarded after a competitive peer-reviewed process.