Question: Is your main scientifical research on umbilical cords?

Tim Millar answered on 14 Jun 2011:

I use umbilical cords to model the blood vessel. Cords are in plentiful supply at our local hospital and the cells inside the cords are easy to collect. I grow them into new blood vessels and the flow cells along them to see how the immune cells stick to the blood vessels wall. This is part of disease like arthritis and cancer and this process makes a very good target for drugs. If we can stop the immune cells moving into the surrounding tissue we can reduce the damage that they do.

I also collect the blood from the cords as it contains lots of stem cells. We then try and change these stem cells into other types of cells like bone, immune cells and blood vessel cells which is quite a neat trick.

We take placentas at the same time and I take whole blood vessels from there and use them iun experiments to see how we can contro blood vessel leakiness which can be a problem in lots od diseases.

Using human tissue like this means the results are relevant to humans, we are not restricted to strange cell lines and the need to use animals in research is reduced.