Stem cell research leads to potential new therapy for rare blood disorder

A unique partnership between industry and academia has led to human clinical trials of a new drug for a rare class of blood diseases called myeloproliferative disorders (MPD), which are all driven by the same genetic mutation and can evolve into leukemia. In just one year, collaborative discoveries by stem cell researchers from the University of California, San Diego, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Mayo Clinic and a San Diego pharmaceutical company, TargeGen, moved from identification of the most promising drug candidate to clinical trials for a new drug to fight this degenerative blood disorder, which affects more than 100,000 Americans.