Washington University in St. Louis (WU)
The main interest of our laboratory is the discovery and characterization of gene mutations in patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML) with the long term goal of understanding the molecular mechanisms that control abnormal hematopoiesis. MDS results from the expansion of one or more dominant hematopoietic clones that contain initiating mutations, while transformation from MDS to AML occurs as these clones accumulate additional progression factors (including point mutations in genes and cytogenetic abnormalities).