Stem Cell Clonality and the Niche
The Bruce Merrifield Distinguished Lecture
Event Details
- Type
- Friday Lecture Series
- Speaker(s)
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Leonard Zon, M.D., director of the stem cell program, Boston Children’s Hospital; Grousbeck Professor of Pediatric Medicine, Harvard Medical School; professor of stem cell and regenerative biology, Harvard University; investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- Speaker bio(s)
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Stem cells can self-renew or differentiate. This process is governed by the environment of the stem cells referred to as the niche. Cellular barcoding tools have been developed to track clones of stem cells and niche cells. Blood stem cells are found in the marrow adjacent to stromal cells that include specialized blood vessels called sinusoids. These sinusoids maintain the self-renewal capacity of the blood stem cells. We have found that in zebrafish with leukemia, the niche changes to allow dominant clones of endothelial progenitors, and this facilitates the growth of the leukemia. The leukemia secretes a growth factor, apelin, that drives this endothelial expansion. Our studies highly that the niche controls both normal and malignant stem cell states.
Leonard I. Zon, M.D., is the Grousbeck Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Stem Cell Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator, and Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University. He is recognized internationally for his groundbreaking work in blood stem cell biology and cancer, and for pioneering the use of the zebrafish as an animal model for hematopoiesis and melanoma.
- Open to
- Tri-Institutional