Students and colleagues attended “The Future of Fighting Disease,” presented by Sacramento State’s College of Natural Science and Mathematics in the Redwood Room in the University Union Tuesday night.

The lecture was given by Dr. Diane Kause, the associate director of the Stem Cell Program at Yale University.

“In 2001, Dr. Krause led a team of researchers who discovered that adult stem cells taken from the bone marrow of mice can differentiate into epithelial cells for the repair of organs as diverse as liver, lung, and intestines,” said Jill Trainer, dean of NSM, as she introduced Krause.

The lecture covered the structure of adult stem cells and how they were used in Krause’s research.

The research led to one of the first reports of marrow-derived stem cells contributing to tissue repair, Trainer said.

One of the challenges in the research is to prove and show the results more than once, Krause said.

“We always think critically to show what we are looking for,” Krause said. “But enough people believed in this.”

The lecture was also presented by Sac State’s Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) center.

The goal of the STEM center is to graduate more students from the science, technology, engineering and mathematics field and strengthen the quality of the education and research.

The lecture was the first of the four-part series on regenerative medicine, which is funded by a California Institute for Regenerative Medicine grant.

Along with college students, there were high school students who attended the lecture.

“I thought it was really educational,” Mallorie Cruz, senior at Elk Grove High School, said. “Knowing the background of the subject really helped.”

Cruz said she decided to come to the event after her teacher informed Cruz and her Advanced Placement biology classmates about the lecture.

The next lecture will be on Dec. 8 in the Union Ballroom, which will cover HIV gene therapy.

Miyu Kataoka can be reached at [email protected].