Dr. Courtney Griffin: An OMRF researcher returns to her roots. With a twist.
As a teen, Dr. Courtney Griffin’s first taste of laboratory work stemmed from plants like the ones that populated the fields in her native Athens, Georgia. “Our research was funded by big tobacco companies and focused on insect viruses in worms that ate tobacco leaves.” So, it represented a perfect circle of sorts when, in January 2019, the Oklahoma Center for Adult Stem Cell Research named OMRF’s Griffin its new scientific director.
Using funds paid to the state to resolve litigation against cigarette makers, the Oklahoma Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust created the Center in 2010. The idea was to use funds generated by cigarette sales to stimulate state research in the emerging field of adult stem cell technology, which had demonstrated promise in a number of disease areas, including cancer. Over the ensuing decade, the Center, which is housed at OMRF, awarded $17 million in grants to Oklahoma scientists focused on stem cell research. This investment has paid major dividends, growing the community of Oklahoma scientists who study this important field and resulting in more than $90 million in additional grants as a result of projects launched through the Center.
When founding scientific director Dr. Paul Kincade retired, the Center tapped Griffin to succeed him. While the two researchers had been OMRF colleagues for 11 years, they held different scientific interests.
A cardiovascular biologist with degrees from Harvard and the University of California, San Francisco, Griffin’s research at OMRF focuses on genes that regulate blood and lymphatic vessels. Her work has implications for a broad spectrum of health challenges, including cancer, heart disease, aneurysm and toxic drug overdose.
In her new role at the Center, Griffin saw the opportunity to expand the scope of its vision to include work in regenerative medicine, a field closely related to stem cell biology. “Regenerative medicine challenges us to harness stem cell and development biology research into discovering new ways of repairing, replacing or rejuvenating disease-damaged organs in the body,” she says. Griffin is particularly interested in how regenerative medicine might open new doors for treating smoking and obesity-related diseases, both of which afflict Oklahomans at disproportionate rates.
While taking on her new role at the Center, Griffin continues her laboratory work at OMRF, where later in the year she received a seven-year grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. The award enables her to pursue novel research into blood vessel function and factors that lead to uncontrolled bleeding. “Seven years is like paradise to a scientist,” says Griffin. “This will give us the opportunity to dig in on basic science questions that could lead to new drugs and therapies for devastating conditions like aneurysms and coronary artery disease.”
The grant was awarded under a new federal program to provide sustained support to scientists who have established themselves as thought leaders in key research areas. “Dr. Griffin has emerged as an expert in the field of protease-mediated vascular stability,” said Dr. Yunling Gao, a program officer at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. “We look forward to her new breakthroughs and achievements for years to come.”
What’s a Stem Cell?
Stem cells are human cells that have the unique ability to develop into many different cell types, from muscle cells to brain cells. Because of a Nobel Prize-winning discovery, scientists today can take an “adult” cell—a skin or blood sample from a research volunteer or patient—and make just about any cell in the body. As a result, the controversy surrounding so-called embryonic stem cells has virtually disappeared, as researchers now have little use for them.
