Adapted from an article published today by UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center
By Linda Wang
Hanna Mikkola, professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology, has received a $2.3 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state’s stem cell agency, to advance stem cell-based treatments for childhood leukemia in Down syndrome.
Children with Down syndrome face a significantly higher risk of developing leukemia, but scientists don’t understand how this blood cancer begins during pregnancy or how to identify pregnancies that are at risk. Mikkola’s award will support her work to trace how blood stem cell development goes awry, leading to a pre-leukemic condition that either resolves naturally after birth or progresses to leukemia.Â
Using patient samples and pluripotent stem cell models, the research team will map the disease’s evolution at the single-cell level to uncover the mechanisms driving this leukemia. The resulting tools will provide crucial insights into the root causes of leukemia in children with Down syndrome, potentially leading to new methods for preventing the cancer before it starts. This research could also advance our understanding of other blood diseases that originate before birth and provide a blueprint for scientists to create specific blood cell types for more accurate disease modeling and more effective cell therapies.
Read the original article in full, here.