Chengcheng (Alec) Zhang, PhD

Ex Vivo expansion of hematopoietic stem cells for cord blood and allogeneic transplantations

The ability to grow blood stem cells (HSCs) in culture would greatly improve the patient outcome in transplantation, and make cord blood to be useful for adult applications. We have identified several new growth factors, and established a very potent cell culture system for growing human HSCs. We will use a newly developed immunoassay to study how they new growth factors regulate HSC activity. We will also screen conditions to significantly improve the efficiency of our HSC culture system. We will further investigate why our cultured cells greatly enhance allogeneic transplantation, and identify the responsible cell populations facilitating the allograft.