Five years after surgery to treat prostate cancer, Steele Dewey of Charlotte, North Carolina, was told in 2010 that cancer had spread, so he and his wife, Molly, decided to seek advice at an academic medical center.

“One day, patients will have access to regenerative medicine treatments that will circumvent the complications of organ donation,” says Sharlini Sankaran, PhD, executive director of Duke’s Regeneration Next Initiative. “We will be able to use our bodies’ own innate repair mechanisms to eliminate the wait time, cost, and limited supply of organ transplantation. Instead of transplanting organs, we will know how to repair our own.”

Leslie Love, 59, has been volunteering with the Duke Cancer Patient Support Program for more than 11 years now, assisting patients in the chemo room at the Morris Cancer Clinic.