St Vincent's Institute

Billions of blood cells are produced in our body each day, due to highly controlled regulation of self-renewal and differentiation processes of blood stem cells. Blood cell production predominantly occurs in the bone marrow and the non-blood cell types present in the bone marrow (collectively called the bone marrow microenvironment) are important in helping to control blood cell production from stem cells. Incomplete production or function of the different blood cell types or problems arising in the function or composition of the non-blood cells that regulate blood cell production can lead to blood cell diseases such as cancers.

Research Overview

The Stem Cell Regulation Group is interested in learning how stem cells, in particular blood cell-forming stem cells and bone-forming stem cells, are regulated to either increase in number (by a process termed self-renewal) or produce more blood cells (a process termed differentiation). We are also interested in learning how cells of the bone marrow microenvironment (where blood stem cells normally reside) interact with blood stem cells to regulate both self-renewal of blood stem cells and blood cell production from blood stem cells. In a separate theme, we have also recently established the most faithful small animal model of osteosarcoma, a bone cancer that occurs predominantly in teenagers, and are using this model to determine processes involved in the initiation, progression and metastasis of this cancer.