Our Research

Laboratory projects focused on a variety of aspects to improve curative therapies for sickle cell disease, such as:

Engraftment

Evaluating the role of host natural killer (NK) cells in graft rejection following allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. In this project, biospecimens are collected from ongoing clinical trials of HLA-matched and mismatched allogeneic transplant for sickle cell disease.

Viral infections

Defining the extent of immune deficiency following transplantation that leads to viral infection and determining if adoptive transfer of virus-specific T cells can restore immunity rapidly. This project is also evaluating how virus-specific T cells developed from cord blood can be used to restore immunity following cord blood transplantation.

Hematopoietic stem cell source

Evaluating umbilical cord blood as a source of cells for gene modification to treat sickle cell disease.

Curative therapy efficacy

Collaborative effort with a bioengineering expert, Nitin Agrawal, Ph.D., to develop a uniform, feasible method to reproducibly assess if a therapy can result in red blood cells that do not sickle.