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Jordan Green, a biomedical engineer from Johns Hopkins, has a way with words. And toys. He’s like a Mister Rogers (American) or Mr. Dressup (Canadian) for adults. He has a complicated idea to convey, so borrowing from the best children’s entertainers around, he uses colourful props that perfectly suit his friendly demeanor. Dr. Green’s lab is exploring ways to treat brain cancers and he has narrowed in on nanoparticles that can program cancer cells to self-destruct without harming the healthy cells.
To demonstrate his premise, he reaches into his “toy box” – his words! – to pull out dominoes and balloons. Black dominoes represent normal cells, white dominoes represent mutated cells and balloons stand in for cells that change their colour and shape following gene therapy. All that his video is missing are some friendly puppets to bounce ideas off of. His explanation is so clear, I bet a kid would understand it. I did.
Our regular feature, Right Turn, showcases the “lighter” side of stem cells and regenerative medicine. Every Friday, we will bring you cartoons, photos, videos and other content that may be just as thought provoking as the written submissions that you are used to finding here, but they definitely won’t be blogs.
As always, we welcome your feedback and we also welcome suitable submissions. Be creative! Use the right (!) side of your brain. Make us laugh! Let’s see if we can make this new direction a positive one for all of us. Send your submission to info(at)ccrm.ca.
Stacey Johnson
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