Buckley, 58, developed bone marrow transplant therapies for severe combined immunodeficiency disease (SCID). Before her work in 1982, only perfectly matched siblings of SCID infants could be bone marrow donors. Most afflicted babies did not have matched donors.
"It was horrible because they all died within a few weeks of being diagnosed," Buckley says.
In 1982, Buckley and colleagues found that transplants involving stem cells rather than mature T cells pose little threat of graft-versus-host disease (Journal of Immunology, 136:2398-2407, 1986). Since that discovery, Buckley has reported that her group has been able to save about 75 percent of 45 marrow-transplant infants without matched donors.
Buckley is also known for her work in allergic diseases. She published the first report of hyperimmunoglobulinemia E, also known as Buckley syndrome (Pediatrics, 49: 59-70, 1972). "People joke about it and say it's just a trivial problem--but that's a misconception that people have," she ...
