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New stem cell meeting on the Baltic Sea is launched

Leukemia volume 26, pages 164–166 (2012)Cite this article

The Baltic Sea, which connects middle, northern and eastern European countries, is the setting for an exciting new stem cell conference, the Baltic Stem Cell Meeting. Cold in winter, but glorious in summer, the Baltic coast will be the place where, every 2 years, researchers from all over the world, possessed by the fever of stem cell research, will come together. Besides the pleasant summer temperature, it is no coincidence that stem cell research in this part of world has a long history. It was in St Petersburg that Alexander Maximow first coined the term ‘stem cell’. After demonstrating that all blood cells develop from a common precursor cell, Maximow proposed the unitarian theory of hematopoiesis. His experimental work provided evidence, confirming that lymphocytes of the blood and lymph nodes are undifferentiated cells with stem cell properties.1 A few decades earlier, at the opposite side of the Baltic in western Pomerania (at that time part of Prussia), Rudolf Virchow, the father of cellular pathology, was born. He is also cited as the first pathologist to recognize leukemia cells and proposed the famous epigram ‘Omnis cellula e cellula’ (every cell originates from a similar existing cell). He and his trainee, Julius Cohnheim, who was also born close to the Baltic coast in western Pomerania, proposed the embryonic rest hypothesis of cancer development, a concept that laid the groundwork for the currently popular theory in which cancer is described as a stem cell disorder.2 In more modern times, other excellent stem cell researchers, including Dr Sven Age Killmann (a founder of our journal Leukemia), have also worked in the Baltic region in Copenhagen. Dr Killmann, together with his wife (Dr Nicole Killmann, editor of Leukemia), coined the sleeper-feeder theory for leukemia. Accordingly, it has been proposed that malignancies in the hematopoietic system seem to depend on a small subset of so-called cancer stem cells for their continued growth and progression.

This first Baltic Stem Cell Meeting was held in Szczecin, the capital of Western Pomerania, Poland, and was sponsored by an economic innovation grant awarded by the European Union and supported by the Polish Ministry of Science. The host of the meeting was Pomeranian Medical University.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Innovative Economy Operational Program POIG.01.01.01-00-109/09-01.

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  1. Stem Cell Institute at James Graham Brown Cancer Center, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA

    M Z Ratajczak

  2. Department of Physiology, Pomeranian Medical University, Szczecin, Poland

    M Z Ratajczak

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Correspondence to M Z Ratajczak.

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Ratajczak, M. New stem cell meeting on the Baltic Sea is launched. Leukemia 26, 164–166 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/leu.2011.182

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