Lumen Winter 2018 - Flipbook - Page 26
A PASSION
FOR AIRWAY
STEM CELLS
A 2018 nominee for South Australian of the Year,
Dr Nigel Farrow was a professional musician
until his infant daughter, Ella, was diagnosed
with cystic fibrosis. After some soul searching, he
decided to give up his career to study science and
work to find a cure for this life-limiting disease.
STORY BY HANNAH KILMORE
Now doing post-doctoral work with the
Robinson Institute’s Cystic Fibrosis Airway
Research Group, Nigel initially was adamant
that he wanted to study viral vectors – ways
to deliver a cure to the lungs. However, as
he progressed, he discovered his real passion
was in the airway stem cells themselves.
His research focuses on correcting the
genetic cause of cystic fibrosis (CF) at a
cellular level in the airways. To achieve this,
a modified virus is first used as a transport
mechanism to introduce the healthy
version of the cystic fibrosis gene
into the airway cells.
The problem is that cells only have a given
lifespan, as they are eventually lost as part of
the normal cell turnover process. This means
that any procedure to correct the diseased
cells would need to be repeated.
So how do we combat this? “I am developing
a way to target the adult stem cells,” Nigel
said. “These live in the airway and sit there
ready to continually replace the cells that
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The University of Adelaide
are lost as they die off naturally. By targeting
these stem cells and inserting our healthy
copy of cystic fibrosis gene there, the stem
cells should pass this healthy gene on
to their ‘daughter’ cells.”
In a study published early this year in the
journal Human Gene Therapy, Nigel reveals
that he can demonstrate – by using a marker
gene – that it is possible to target these
airway stem cells directly.
“By using a marker gene, we have shown that
these stem cells (in an animal) replenished
the airway and we can see these lovely little
colonies of daughter cells expressing the
marker gene – it was so exciting!” he said.
In the last couple of years, Nigel has also
been investigating an alternative way of
treating the same cells. “Coming at it from
a different angle, instead of leaving the stem
cells where they are, we can take out those
cells, apply the vector virus to deliver the
healthy genes outside the body, grow up a
colony, and put them back in. Essentially,
we want to take airway stem cells out of a
CF patient, fix them and put them back in to
that same patient.”
Even though Nigel’s research is still in the
animal model phase, in late 2017 he and his
team successfully saw the change in human
airway cells they had taken out of the body
to fix. A photo of these transformed human
cells was in the recent Human Gene Therapy
and has since been seen around the world,
creating ripples of excitement.
Does Nigel still play music? For a many
years after Ella’s diagnosis, he refused to
do so and sold all but one of his guitars,
but things are changing. “Now that I’ve
achieved something of what I set out to do,
I’ve allowed myself to revisit music, and I’ve
been twiddling with the guitar a bit, enjoying
it a bit more … I think it’s important to have
other interests—it helps us do what we do
here, which can be so intense, so an interest
outside work is great.”
