Kerry Atkinson

Kerry Atkinson was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1943. He graduated in medicine in 1968 in London. He specialized in medical oncology and learned how it was possible to use stem cells taken from the bone marrow to cure people with terminal leukemia. This was achieved by giving them high-dose chemotherapy and total body irradiation followed by an intravenous infusion of bone marrow stem cells from a tissue-compatible brother or sister that provided the recipient with normal blood cells - red cells that carry oxygen, white blood cells that fight infection and platelets which help the blood to clot. Amazing stem cell fact #1: if a brother receives bone marrow stem cells from a sister all his blood cells for the rest of his life will have two X chromosomes (normal for females) - because they are female in origin. Vice-versa if a sister receives a bone marrow transplant (no other organs are affected like this). In 1990 Professor E. Donnall Thomas in Seattle, USA, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his pioneering work in bone marrow transplantation. Professor Atkinson worked with him for 5 years and then decided to work with Professor Jim Biggs in Sydney, to establish the country's first bone marrow transplant program. After 15 years at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney, he had an opportunity to work in Baltimore and then in Brisbane on a different type of human stem cell - the mesenchymal stem cell, which gives rise to tissues of the skeletal system: bone, cartilage, tendons, muscles and fat. Amazing stem cell fact #2: unlike bone marrow stem cells, these cells do not need to be tissue-compatible between donor and recipient. This book is the first to describe the biology and therapeutic potential of these cells.