Duncan Ross, Ph.D. trained in the University of Miami’s hematology transplant department under Krishna Komanduri MD and Robert Levy Ph.D. Dr. Ross is a published scientist with works that appear in a number of the most respected peer-reviewed transplantation journals in the industry including The Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation, Blood, and many more. He was an assistant professor of immunology at Miami Dade College and completed Ph.D. coursework in Biochemistry as well as Immunology studying rejection in allogeneic stem cell transplantation and protein expression and purification. Dr. Ross began his career subsequent to his father’s death due to Acute Myeloid Leukemia. His scientific work then focused on cancer and mechanisms of controlling inflammation using chemotherapeutic, regulatory T cell, and now, mesenchymal stem cell methods. Dr. Ross is joined in the laboratory by a team of scientists, engineers, quality assurance, and medical device experts.
Over 20 years ago my Oceanographer father and I were faced with an almost impossible decision. The chemotherapy we were using to treat his leukemia was no longer functional, and we were forced to choose an immunological approach, bone marrow stem cell transplantation (BMT), for which the rate of survival was 50%. We hesitated for so long that when we finally decided on BMT he was no longer eligible. Two years before his death, I enrolled in the Ph.D. program at the University of Miami and today I am still trying to control disease using immunological approaches. One of those approaches used in BMT is the use of Mesenchymal Stem Cells to control rejection. I have been published in a number of journals for BMT and now I would like to bring this same academic approach to the clinic in what is largely an unregulated segment of medicine today: the Stem Cell Clinic. Through partnerships with US Physicians I would like to help clinicians bring a tailored immunological approach to their patients, in order to PROVE, using real data, that our regenerative medicine works. Contrary to many of the treatment centers in business today, we do not “guess” as to what should be done to our patients, or point to publications by others. We are only interested in the benefits we can show in the laboratory. A clinic may offer nebulization of stem cells with no scientific back up beside the fact that it “sounds” appropriate, while we will show you that the cells are destroyed. This is just one in a myriad of decisions that require a trained scientific team to evaluate.