Haematological Malignancies

About the project

About the Project Group Leader: Dr Adam Wilkinson ( Wilkinson Group ) Research Summary Haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are critical for human health and disease treatment. HSCs are a rare stem cell population that can generate all the cells of the blood and immune system. Many blood and immune cells are short-lived and must be continuously produced in huge numbers (~2 million per second) throughout our lives. Abnormalities in blood production are common and underlie a number of serious human diseases including blood cancers, anaemias and immunodeficiencies. Despite their importance, the paucity of HSCs and lack of tractable ex vivo HSC culture systems means that the mechanisms that regulate HSC activity are incompletely understood. HSCs are also used in clinic therapy with HSC transplantation therapy currently represents the only curative treatment option for numerous haematological malignancies. Additionally, HSC-based gene therapies are being developed and used to correct various hereditary blood diseases. While potentially curative, these HSC transplantation therapies still represent a high-risk procedure and are not available to all patients. The Wilkinson Group are aiming to improve the safety, availability, and potential applications of HSC-based therapies through developing new tools to expand and modify HSCs ex vivo . Towards this goal, they have pioneered new methods to expand transplantable HSCs long-term ex vivo (Wilkinson et al, Nature 2019; Igarashi et al, Blood Advances 2023; Sakurai et al, Nature 2023) and to evaluate the consequences of CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing on functional HSCs in transplantation models (Wilkinson et al, Nature Communications 2021; Becker et al, Cell Stem Cell 2023). The Wilkinson laboratory is currently leveraging this technology to (1) investigate the molecular regulation of HSC self-renewal and lineage commitment, (2) better understand how HSC dysfunction can drive blood cancer initiation, and (3) develop novel HSC-based therapies. To Apply: We encourage prospective PhD students to reach out directly to Dr Wilkinson, acw63@cam.ac.uk to discuss potential projects and supervision. Applicants must secure the support of a Supervisor within a laboratory before submitting an application . Please contact the project Supervisor(s) to discuss potential supervision, proposed research project and funding options, which should then be used to write your formal application. Applications will be submitted to the ' PhD in Stem Cell Biology ' and full course details can be found at https://www.postgraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/courses/directory/blscpdscp

Research areas