Michael Dexter’s work focuses on the control of blood cell formation and the mechanisms leading to leukaemia development. He pioneered the development of long-term culture techniques for haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells, devised methods permitting the selective formation of various lineages of blood cells and exploited these culture methods to prove that the early events in blood cell formation are controlled by specialised stromal cells in the marrow. He developed cloned immortalised haematopoietic cell lines with varying differentiation commitment and used these to analyse the mechanisms by which oncogenic viruses transform normal to leukaemic cells. The widespread application of his novel techniques has been crucial for recent rapid advances in cellular haematology.
Dr Michael Dexter FMedSci FRS
