The dark side of blood

Blood stem cells produce all blood cell types throughout life, including red blood cells that transport oxygen throughout our body and white blood cells that help us fight infections. Blood stem cells are very rare, but they have immense regenerative potential. Not all blood stem cells are equal, and there are different subtypes that contribute differently to daily blood production. In this talk, I will discuss our current understanding of how diversity in blood stem cells maintains blood formation in healthy conditions and under stresses such as inflammation, blood loss or transplantation.

We each make more than 200,000,000,000 new blood cells every day – and to keep us healthy, we can’t make too many or too few. To control this process, our blood-producing cells read signals from the body that instruct them how many cells to create. In some people these signals get misread, which causes blood diseases. Come along to hear how scientists discovered the signals that control blood production by giving hen’s eggs the flu and peeing into buckets; and how understanding blood production helps patients.

Every day we make billions of specialised blood cells from a single cell type: haematopoietic stem cell (HSC). These cells are tightly regulated but are also the origin of the majority of blood cancers. My group takes a multidisciplinary approach, using cell-based, mouse and human systems and functional, biochemical and genomic assays to determine how HSC become corrupted during the evolution of aggressive blood cancers, particularly acute leukaemias and malignant lymphomas. With the aim of identifying therapeutic targets to improve treatment and to possibly prevent these devastating diseases.

As part of the Creative Reactions project, these artists will be presenting their artwork inspired by the research of speakers in this talk series. The artwork will also be on display at our Creative Reactions Exhibition at St Barnabas Church, 24 - 25 May.