I want to know where blood comes from. Biologically, the blood system is fantastically intricate. People have studied blood, both healthy and otherwise, for centuries. From Paracelsus’ comments on splenomegally in the 1500’s to the famous clotting disease of the Romanovs in Russia (and other royal households), what blood does, and how it does it, is of great scientific and medical interest. My background is in genetics and my research tries to understand what genes are involved in blood cell production, how that happens at the earliest stages when the first blood cell is made from its non-blood precursor, and how the entire process goes astray in disease. I do this work using human embryonic stem cells (hESC’s). The specific use of hESC’s is key to my work for at least two reasons: (1) I am interested in understanding the pathophysiology of human genetic diseases of the blood and (2) embryonic stem cells are capable of making any type of cell in our bodies, but have yet to do it; they are a blank slate. Adult blood stem cells are eventually made in nature from a cell like an embryonic stem cell and I want to understand how that works.

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The Red Pill