Humphries, R. Keith
Professor, Dept of Medicine
Associate Member, Dept of Pathology and Laboratory MedicineSenior Scientist, Terry Fox Laboratory
M.D. University of British Columbia (1975)
Ph.D. University of British Columia (1980)
Research Interests
My research concentrates on two major areas. The first is the characterization of genes that underly the self-renewal and multipotential differentiation capacity of hemopoietic stem cells. The former property is essential for the life long maintenance of hemopoietic function and for regeneration after damage or transplantation; the latter results in the production of the multiple specialized but short lived mature blood cell types.
Our recent work focused on the Hox homeobox family of transcription factors indicates that these are major players in both normal and leukemic blood cell production. Work now is directed at a more complete understanding of the regulatory role of this large family of genes (some 39 in number) in both murine and human hemopoietic cells using a variety of techniques including gene expression profiling, gene transfer and transgenic/gene targeting models. My lab is also interested in developing stem cell based therapies for a variety of hemopoietic diseases through the use of stem cell amplification and gene transfer strategies. One major area of work is directed at gene therapy for sickle cell anemia and thalassemia by exploiting new methods for gene delivery and the availability of mouse models of these conditions.