ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Dr. Paul Linser for both
direction and yet ample latitude to explore and satisfy my
own intellectual curiosities. I would also like to thank my
committee comprised of Drs. Francis Davis, Carl Feldherr,
and Chris West for guidance and constructive criticisms
throughout my dissertation research. A special thanks goes
to the University of Florida Division of Pediatric
Hematology and Oncology and especially Dr. Adrian Gee for
making this research possible through his commitment of
continuous gifts of microspheres, antibodies, and
encouragement to me. Also, I thank Dr. John Ugelstad of the
University of Trondheim, Norway, for a generous gift of
microspheres.
I would also like to thank Drs. Gudrun Bennett and
Gerry Shaw of the University of Florida as well as Dr.
Steve Pfeiffer of the University of Connecticut for gifts
of antibodies without which most of this work could not
have been done. Thanks are also in order to Drs. Paul
Begovac and Steve Dworetzsky for many worthwhile
discussions and sharing the common bond of being a usually
helpless guinea pig in the experiment of education that
runs continuously and often without controls in the big
orange and blue apparatus. I whole-heartedly thank anyone
that I have left out that has made my time in graduate
school either intellectually rewarding, pleasurable, or
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