Olivia Charlton

Acute Myeloid Leukemia is a fast-growing blood cancer that is resistant to most interventions and typically reappears after conventional treatment. This year, In the US alone, 20,380 people were diagnosed with AML and 11,310 people died from it. Currently, the five year survival rate for AML is only 29.5%, which is why targeted and specific therapies need to be developed to ensure higher survival rates in the future. The Kousteni Lab at Columbia University aims to create therapies that target specific signaling pathways that are involved in the development of AML. Since AML is a disease of the bone marrow, the lab explores the relationship between the bone marrow microenvironment, where white and red blood cells are formed, and stem cell function.This is because changes in stem cells lead to AML development and progression. Specifically, the Lab observes interactions between different chemical signals, and pathways in the bone marrow microenvironment to see which aspect of the pathway allows for the abnormality of myeloid cells to occur,  leading to AML progression. The lab uses molecular profiling, cell cocultures, gene editing tools such as CRISPR, and other cutting edge tools to study AML. Recently, they were able to find an axis of molecular interactions in cells that are dependent on the bone marrow microenvironment that promotes AML growth and proliferation. Once this axis was found, they were able to apply specific treatments targeting the axis which significantly reduced levels of leukemia burden for all patients. Currently, the Kousteni Lab has been experimenting on mice, but their work has influenced many clinical trials that use their work to develop targeted treatments for AML. Overall, the work the Kousteni Lab is doing, allows researchers to have a clearer understanding of how to decelerate, or even terminate the progression of Acute Myeloid Leukemia, resulting in countless lives saved.