NAME Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg
PROFESSION Professor of Pediatrics
HOME BASE Duke Hospital’s North Pavillion
AGE 54
From a small, cluttered office at Duke’s Medical Center, Kurtzberg believes in a tiny cell’s potential.
For the matter-of-fact woman who oversees more pediatric stem cell transplants at Duke Children’s Hospital than anyone else in the world, Kurtzberg sees miracles in the microscope.
Cord stem cells—master cells gathered from newborn umbilical cords—hold the key to treating Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis within the next ten years, Kurtzberg says. And as director of DUMC’s Pediatric Stem Cell Transplant Program, she’s a front-line advocate fighting diseases once thought irreversible and fatal. While conducting ground-breaking research for new treatments, she’s testified before Congress about the possibilities offered by cord stem cell therapies.
While Congressional lawmakers continue to bicker over the importance and ethics of embryonic stem cell research and therapies, Kurtzberg has pioneered treatment options for patients who suffer from cancer, metabolic diseases and other genetic disorders using relatively uncontroversial umbilical stem cells. After subjecting a patient to near-fatal doses of chemotherapy, doctors transplant a donor’s stem cells into the patient. Even though the researchers aren’t exactly sure what happens next, they think the new stem cells flow into the bone marrow—and other damaged parts of the body—and begin reproducing uninfected cells. So far the therapies have been fully effective in children—who, unlike adults, can bounce back from the chemotherapy.
With her at the helm, Duke is poised to become the leader in what Kurtzberg says is a field of medicine with the highest potential for new breakthroughs.
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