Prof. Dr. Rainer Storb (Pioneer of the Stem Cell Transplantation)

In this episode, we are joined by Prof. Dr. Rainer Storb, one of the trailblazers who established bone marrow and stem cell transplantation as an effective treatment for diseases like leukemia, lymphoma and aplastic anemia.

Rainer is a medical doctor, physician and professor for hematology and oncology at University of Washington's School of Medicine, pioneer of the blood stem cell transplantation, and one of the most impactful biomedical scientists and research translators of our time. He is also a founding member of the Fred Hutch Cancer Center, heading its transplantation biology program and its clinical research division. As a physician, he has been treating patients himself with therapies he has discovered, designed, studied, and standardized.

We talk about the seemingly hopeless case he and his colleagues took on when he first entered the field in the 1960s, the adversarial circumstances under which they were conducting their research, the challenges they faced, how he dealt with these challenges, and how first transplantations in humans started to work consistently. We also find out how stem cell transplantation evolved into a procedure that has been performed more than 1'000'000 times around the globe since Rainer and his colleagues laid the ground-breaking foundations.

And we talk about how Rainer envisions a cancer treatment, free of aggressive radiation and heavy chemotherapy, on the path to eliminating cancer.