Pediatric Surgeon Tippi MacKenzie, MD was awarded $12.1 million by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to treat babies in the womb suffering from alpha thalassemia major, a blood disorder that is only detected in the last few months of pregnancy and is almost uniformly fatal.
Pediatric surgeon Michael R. Harrison, MD and UC Berkeley engineer Phillip Messersmith, PhD are collaborating on an NIH-Funded research project to improve glues used in fetal surgery procedures, notably those used to treat twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. Dr. Harrision, widely acknolwedged as the "father of fetal surgery", is Director Emeritus of the Fetal Treatment Center and leads the research of the Harrison Lab. The full story was recently reported in UC Berkeley News.