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University of California, San Diego

3855 Health Sciences Drive #0815
La Jolla, CA 92093
United States

Until last year, the majority of patients diagnosed with high risk neuroblastoma succumbed to the disease despite intensive chemotherapy and bone marrow transplantation. In 2010, the PI of this proposal reported a major improvement in survival from 46% to 66% using an antibody therapeutic. Unfortunately, we cannot predict who will respond to this treatment which is frequently accompanied by serious side effects.

Over 100 billion blood cells are generated every day from our bone marrow. Paradoxically, these vast numbers of cells derive from an exceedingly rare population of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) that both self-renew and generate all blood and immune cell types for life. The characteristics and functions of these remarkable cells are highly conserved in all vertebrate animals. Our laboratory utilizes the unique attributes of the zebrafish embryo to study the biology of HSCs in new ways.

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