From Labs to Patients

Many current medical treatments started in a lab like this with nothing more than a big idea.

Hematologist Stephen Embury, M.D., says, "You have to have an idea and then you have to have funding. And then it takes commitment."

Over 25 years of commitment to sickle cell disease helped doctor Dr. Embury, of University of California, San Francisco, make his latest contribution to the medical world.

He says, "I think there's room for improved approaches to treatment of sickle cell disease and I think that's the direction we may be headed in."

In sickle cell disease, blood cells stick to the vessel walls. Dr. Embury discovered the protein P-selectin makes it worse. That steered him toward a possible new treatment.

He and co-researcher Neil Matsui, Ph.D., are looking to the blood-thinner heparin to block the protein.

Matsui says, "We're hoping to take it to the level where we're actually bringing something that we've been doing research on to help patients. So that's rather exciting in itself."

Dr. Embury says, "The empathy I feel for these patients when they're suffering has led to a real appreciation, a real desire to want to be able to do something about it."

Sickle cell patient and mother Alanda Richardson can appreciate that. "That's a good feeling to have -- a doctor that cares -- instead of, 'Well, here's your prescription.'"

With faces like these to drive his research, Dr. Embury is charging ahead.

Studies are ongoing to uncover an oral form of heparin. Dr. Embury says they then hope to enter human patients in the trial to determine how helpful the drug is for sickle cell disease.

If you would like more information, please contact:

Twink Stern
Public Affairs
University of California, San Francisco
Box 0462, LHTS 103
San Francisco, CA 94143-0462
(415) 476-1045
tstern@pubaff.ucsf.edu