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Camargo focuses on hematopoietic stem cells, those cells in the bone marrow that give rise to mature blood cells. These cells are rare, and they can remain in an early progenitor state while the cells that they spawn go on to develop into highly specialized cells.
Of particular interest to Camargo are the molecular mechanisms that enable these cells to remain in such a stage. Using a wide range of laboratory technologies such as microarrays and RNA interference, Camargo is currently conducting large-scale screenings of these cells in order to find the exact genes that determine their properties.
When such genetic signatures are identified, researchers may be able to manipulate these cells. In the case of bone marrow transplants, patients need to undergo lethal irradiation and immunosupression, procedures that destroy all the existing bone marrow in the patient's body. But with a greater knowledge of how these cells work, scientists may one day be able to fine-tune their genetic mechanisms in such a way that new cells can be introduced and proliferate in the patient's body without the need to destroy the existing marrow cells.
In leukemia, the mechanism that keeps these stem cells in their progenitor state is hijacked by the cancer, forcing them to proliferate indefinitely. Camargo is investigating exactly how this happens in the hope that such findings may lead to more targeted therapies for blood cancers, and he discussed this connection in a podcast at the Museum of Science in October 2006 (26.8 mb mp3 or 220 kbps mono audio stream courtesy of WGBH Forum Network). He also is interested in identifying the properties that allow these cells to sometimes fuse with other cells.
Camargo received his PhD from Baylor College of Medicine in 2004, and became a Fellow at Whitehead Institute that year | 