Department of Medicine

Meet the Lab

Nick Greco, PhD

Instructor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology at Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Greco has extensive experience in pre-clinical cryopreservation-focused research on granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF)-mobilized peripheral blood CD34+ stem cells and adult bone marrow and umbilical cord blood (UCB)-derived CD34+ and CD133+ cells with a focus on pro-angiogenic events.  Recent experiences have focused on the characterization of adult stem cells in cardiology applications in in vitro vasculogenesis/angiogenesis assays and in an ongoing FDA IND-approved in vivo human clinical trial investigating the safety and efficacy of CD133+ cells in chronic ischemic patients.  Both in vitro and in vivo angiogenic studies include CD133+ cells, endothelial progenitor cells (EPC), and endothelial generating cells (EGC) cultured from bone marrow and UCB, in vitro assays including flow cytometry and CD133 and CD34 cell selection, Matrigel tube formation, immunohistochemistry, confocal microscopy imaging, Doppler flow analyses in NOD.SCID mice in a hindlimb femoral ligation acute ischemic model, left anterior descending artery (LAD) acute ischemic ligation mouse model as well as the design and implementation of current and future human clinical trials based on this work.  Further studies conducted under Dr. Laughlin's direction are focused on the utility of allogeneic UCB adult stem cells in acute and chronic cardiology applications in anticipated future phase I (safety) and phase II (efficacy) clinical trials.