and availability of effective medical countermeasures for the Strategic National Stockpile.
It has recently been discovered that certain cancers result from a small number of seed cells that give rise to the large number of tumor cells. These seed cells appear to have the ability both to create large numbers of cancer tumor cells and to duplicate themselves. In this sense, they are very much like stem cells and have come to be referred to as cancer stem cells. If cancer stem cells are resistant to conventional therapies, they may be a cause of many cancer treatment failures. Targeting these cancer stem cells with cell-specific inhibitors may lead to new therapies for intractable cancers, but these cells must first be isolated. Cellerant Therapeutics is using its knowledge of the blood-forming system and the ability to obtain these unique targets and develop antibody-based therapies against them.
Robert Shifko
Independent Scholar
See Also: Cancer Stem Cells; Overview; Cord Blood Stem Cells; Radiation Injury Treatment.
Further Readings
Cellerant Therapeutics. http://www.cellerant.com/index.html (Accessed May 2014).
Charo, Alta
Charo, Alta
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Charo, Alta
Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1958, R. Alta Charo is a published scholar in the field of emerging technology and public policy, and professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW) as well as one of the leading bioethicists in the United States. As a Warren P. Knowles Professor with UW’s schools of law and medicine, Charo has dedicated her career to studying the relationship between law and medical research. Much of her work is focused on the advocacy of embryonic stem cell research and women’s health initiatives in the United States juxtaposed with the development of legal and government policy that protects the rights of human subjects involved in medical research.
Contributions to Academia
Charo is the Warren P. Knowles Professor of Law and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW), where she joined the faculty in 1989. As of 2014, Charo serves as a faculty member of both the university’s law school and the Department of Medical History and Bioethics. Her teaching topics include areas such as bioethics, food and drug law, biotechnology law, health law, law and medicine, law and science, legislation drafting, public health law, and reproductive rights, to name a few. In addition to her professorship, Charo serves as a Fellow with the Hastings Center, which is an independent, nonpartisan research institution that focuses on bioethics and public policy. During her tenure at UW, Charo has also served as a member of the university’s Hospital Clinical Ethics Committee, the Bioethics Advisory Committee, and the Institutional Review Board, where she uses her expertise to advise the university’s medical institutions and researchers on the various ethics issues associated with 21st-century medical and scientific research and the protection of human subjects who volunteer as part of those medical research studies.
Before joining the faculty of UW in 1989, Charo honed her academic and legal expertise in a variety of positions, including but not limited to associate director of the Legislative Drafting Research Fund at Columbia University; Fulbright Junior Lecturer in American Law at the Sorbonne University in Paris; and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Diplomacy with the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Charo’s own educational background includes a bachelor of arts degree in biology from Harvard University (1979) and a juris doctor (JD) from Columbia University (1982).
In interviews and speaking engagements, Charo has described her academic philosophy as one of “law in action,” in that she helps her students learn legal theory through practical applications. Charo’s teaching philosophy also focuses on providing students an opportunity to bridge the divide between academic scholarship and public policy—a trend demonstrated by her own work and research in U.S. government policy, where she has focused her research and advocacy on emerging technology policy. Her teaching focuses on challenging her students to better understand emerging science as well as how public policy does and can impact the day-to-day lives of American citizens.
Contributions to U.S. Policy and Law
In addition to her contributions in the educational arena, R. Alta Charo has also actively contributed to and been involved in the development of public policy, particularly in regard to stem cell research and the ethics of scientific research and biomedicine. Recognized as a leading expert in bioethics, Charo has dedicated her involvement in developing U.S. public policy to help redefine the ethical, legal, and social standards to better support new and emerging scientific and medical research.
In her work, Charo has often examined the responsibility of medical researchers and scientists to look for solutions to cure diseases for the good of society and the government’s responsibility to protect the rights of human participants in that research. As science and medical research has evolved, so has society’s discussion on moral responsibility—often resulting in contentious debates on morality and scientific ethics. It is in this environment that Charo has demonstrated her expertise and centered her activities in U.S. government on the development of public policy to meet and support the evolution of emerging science, medical research, and technology.
Charo’s government involvement includes serving as a member of the 1994 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Human Research Panel; the National Bioethics Advisory Commission to President Bill Clinton in 1997; and more recently, as an advisory council member with the NIH Council of Councils and the NIH National Center for the Advancement of Translational Sciences. Charo also joined the Barack Obama–Joe Biden transition team as a member of the Department of Health and Human Services group, where she reviewed issues related to bioethics, stem cell policy, women’s reproductive health, food and drug policy, and other national health issues. She also took a leave of absence from UW from 2009 to 2011 in order to serve as a senior policy adviser to the Office of the Commissioner at the Federal Drug Administration, where she worked on public policy on emerging technology issues.
Despite her involvement in government committees and working groups, Charo has publicly acknowledged her belief that politics should not influence judgments on scientific and technical matters and views partisan political interference as a deterrence to the advancement of scientific research and good public policy, which ultimately undermines the expertise found in the scientific and bioethics communities.
In October 2013, Charo was awarded the Adam Yarmolinsky Medal, which recognizes the contributions of persons whose expertise is outside the health and medical sciences to the mission of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. Charo, in particular, was recognized for her invaluable expertise as an attorney and ethicist to several complex and controversial topics as detailed in her work with the Childhood Immunization Schedule and her contributions to a report titled “The Future of Drug Safety: Promoting and Protecting the Health of the Public,” which recounted the history of drug regulation in the United States and assessed the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in regard to its drug approval process.
At present, Charo continues her professorship at UW and serves as an advocate for a variety of public policy and bioethics issues.
L. L. Lundin
