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| A photo from yesterday's celebration--Bertrand's favorite birthday party! |
When you were born, I joked that I loved you so much that I didn't care in which field you got your Ph.D.
I had no idea that by 5 years old, someone would end up getting their Ph.D. in you.
You've led many on a journey through extremes in the human experience.
Today, I'm grateful that you're still here to lead.
May it always be so.
Happy birthday! :)
--Matt (aka Daddy)
"The Make-A-Wish Foundation grants the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions to enrich the human experience with hope, strength and joy. Based in Phoenix, the Foundation is one of the world’s leading children’s charities, serving children in every community in the United States and its territories. With the help of generous donors and more than 25,000 volunteers, the Make-A-Wish Foundation grants a wish every 38 minutes. It has granted more than 212,000 wishes in the United States since its inception in 1980. Visit the Make-A-Wish Foundation at wish.org and discover how you can share the power of a wish."
Reed: Tell us about this new breakthrough in stem cell technology that allows you to create “disease in a dish” models using cells derived from stem cells. What is it all about?”Jackson: It’s a very exciting new advancement. It allows us to take patients’ own cells and, if a patient has a disease that affects those cells, to measure that defect. This is done through advances in quantitative microscopy, mixed with or alongside of robotic drug screening; the two together are quite a spectacular shortcut to be able to see whether a medicine we already have today that is being prescribed for one disease might have utility in another.Now, you say, how could that be? There are a number of very spectacular examples out there of drugs that have been used or developed for one indication and then later on have been found to have a different clinical utility. In the specific example we’re talking about here with disease in a dish, we’re initially focusing on rare diseases. With rare diseases, the children’s cells all have a particular defect, and it’s that defect that we can actually recapitulate and rebuild in a dish, the so-called disease in a dish. Then, using robotics and screening technology and using the kind of equipment you’re seeing behind you here, to search in a systematic way and see whether any preexisting drugs that are already approved could move the needle and improve the defect in the child’s cells.