Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer

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.