For physician-scientist Noah Merin, the form of stem cell transplantation known as bone marrow transplantation remains the “coolest thing in medicine” and the focus of his career.

“I do bone marrow transplantation to replace the immune system and the hematopoietic system of the recipient with the immune system and the hematopoietic system of the donor, and it is completely amazing. It’s a miracle that it works, and it’s a wonderful thing to be able to do,” said Merin, who is an Assistant Professor of Medicine, Director of the Leukemia Program in the Division of Hematology and Cellular Therapy, and Medical Director of the Hematology and Cellular Therapy Disease Research Group at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.

A native of Sacramento, Merin first pursued his interest in biology as a pre-med student at Wesleyan University, where he worked in research labs that studied the hippocampus region of the brain, as well as songbird learning.

After graduating with his bachelor’s degree at age 17, he continued pursuing research at the National Primate Research Center in Davis, as well as in a functional magnetic resonance imaging lab at Stanford University.

Unsure about whether he wanted to pursue an MD or PhD, he was delighted to learn that he could pursue both simultaneously at the University of California, Davis. During his first medical school rotation, he spent six weeks in inpatient hematology, and knew that he had found his calling.

“I used to go in the morning with a note card that had the patient’s blood counts for that day written on it, and I’d write it on their whiteboard in their hospital room,” he said. “Some days, people would just start crying tears of joy, because they were starting to engraft. It meant that it worked, and they were going to go home, and potentially, their cancer was going to be cured.”

He pursued his residency at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, and his clinical fellowship in hematology and oncology at USC. During the second year of his clinical fellowship, he received a grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) that allowed him to begin a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship studying patient characteristics that predict blood cancer relapse in the USC laboratory of Akil Merchant.

“If I had just finished my regular clinical fellowship and not done a postdoc, it would have been hard for me to get access to the type of job that I wanted to do in academic medicine,” he said. “That’s what the CIRM funding and the CIRM imprimatur allowed me to accomplish. So it made a huge difference.”

At Cedars-Sinai, Merin dedicates 60 percent of his time to performing bone marrow transplantations for patients, and 40 percent to conducting research about how stem cell transplantation outcomes can vary based on factors such as donor selection, conditioning regimens, cell dosing, and graft-versus-host disease prevention.

By optimizing protocols based on this type of research, Cedars-Sinai has become one of the top 12 programs for bone marrow transplantation in the US, according to the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research.

Just as CIRM’s support benefited Merin as a postdoc at USC, it continues to benefit him as a physician-scientist at Cedars-Sinai.

“The California taxpayers have done a great thing in setting up CIRM in perpetuity,” he said. “And especially when the federal funding fluctuates, or when vagaries of political changes affect our international research system for health, the CIRM researchers are relatively insulated from that. And the grants are very large, and they last for a long time, and they fund institutes. So it’s great to work at a hospital that has an associated CIRM-funded program.”

When he’s not performing bone marrow transplants or doing clinical research, Merin enjoys outings with the Santa Monica trail runners, and rock climbing outdoors and in the gym. This summer, he’ll also venture to the North Cascades for a backpacking trip.

“I do a lot of hiking, backpacking and climbing,” he said. “LA is great for outdoor stuff.”

Through his clinical work and research, Merin is not only saving lives, but also advancing the science that is improving transplantation outcomes. Thanks to CIRM’s investment in his training and career, Californians are already benefiting from more effective treatments—delivered by a physician-scientist whose roots and commitment remain firmly planted in the state.