BANGOR – In the 40-odd years since Dr. Paul LaMarche started practicing medicine, the field of genetics has moved out of the ivory tower of pure research into the hands of doctors in hospitals and clinics, a real-life resource with valuable clinical applications.

“We’ve made a lot of progress on understanding and managing disease through the years, ” said LaMarche, who has studied genetics for most of his career. “Now we are working more toward using genetic engineering as a technique to cure disease.”

At Husson College in Bangor, genetics research is under way with a real-life mission behind it and LaMarche out in front.

LaMarche retired in 1995 after 21 years at Eastern Maine Medical Center, 10 as chief of pediatrics and genetics and 11 as chief clinical officer. He established the EMMC genetics laboratory in 1974 and a genetics clinic in 1975.

Before coming to Maine, LaMarche founded a genetics program at the Rhode Island Hospital-Brown University School of Medicine. He studied genetics on a research fellowship at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia.

Now, as the director of the Husson Science Research Institute, LaMarche is lending his world-class experience and skill to developing the laboratory as a resource for students and faculty, while continuing the search for new understanding and treatment of disease.

Researchers at Husson’s new Warren Genetics Laboratory will be working with cancer patients, growing and banking stores of patients’ stem cells, “blank slates” that can turn into cells for any one of the thousands of structures in the human body.

Targeting a common but serious complication of breast surgery, LaMarche’s research project will explore the possibility of using stem cells to regenerate portions of the human lymph system.

The lymph system is a network of small vessels, similar to but much smaller than the veins and arteries that make up the blood circulatory system. This system carries fluid from all over the body, along with damaged cells, bacteria and viruses, and cancer cells. It is an essential component of the immune system.

When a patient undergoes breast removal for cancer, the portion of the lymph system in areas near the affected breast – especially in the underarm and upper arm – are often removed as well in order to prevent cancer cells from migrating to another part of the body. Sometimes the lymph system is damaged inadvertently as a result of surgery or radiation.

The loss of circulation sets the patient up for significant swelling, discomfort and dangerous infections, a permanent condition known as lymphedema.

Similar damage to the lymph system may affect the legs as a result of testicular surgery or other procedures.

Husson researchers will gather stem cells from blood samples of volunteers who expect to undergo surgery. The stem cells will be grown in the lab, living in a warm incubator and fed on a diet of fetal calf serum.

About two tablespoons of blood will yield approximately 5 million stem cells. LaMarche says within a few weeks these cells will grow into a milky mass of about 50 trillion stem cells. They will then be stored, deep-frozen in small vials about the size of the cap of a Bic pen, with a trillion cells per vial, give or take a few.

When they’re needed, LaMarche hypothesizes, the cells can be thawed out, stimulated with synthetic chemicals to grow into lymph vessels, and injected into the affected area.

LaMarche says the ability to bank an individual’s stem cells before surgery has the same potential benefit as banking blood before surgery – the patient’s body will recognize and accept its own cells, eliminating the possibility of rejection.

If all goes well, patients who donate their stem cells to the lymphedema project may be able to undergo experimental treatment with their own cells within one or two years of their surgery. Volunteers will be referred to the project through their physicians.

LaMarche will supervise the research project, which has recently been awarded $73,000 in funding from the Maine Lymphedema Network and the California-based David Paul Kane and Linda Tallen Educational and Research Foundation.