Grant: Project Grant

Blood stem cells, because of their ability to remake all blood cell types as well as regenerate themselves, hold the key to a healthy immune system and have lifesaving potential for the treatments of a range of blood cancers and immune disorders. Despite their promise, the lack of understanding of the mechanics that control these specialized cell types has prevented their widespread use, depriving many patients of a potentially curative therapy for their disease. Our work aims to uncover proteins that are required for blood stem cells to carry out regeneration and to perform experiments that will shed light on how they operate. While in the past, much research has focused on defining the molecular players that work on the DNA of these blood stem cells to make their RNA intermediate, we have new evidence that how this RNA intermediate is changed to impact the final step of protein production is of major importance to the regenerative capacity of blood stem cells. Our study will focus on systematically identifying and understanding the players that act on RNA in these rare and clinically valuable cell types in the hopes that we can capitalize on them and on this previously underappreciated layer of control to promote blood stem cell-based regeneration.