OUR RESEARCH

Some of the questions we are trying to answer here at the Sturgeon Lab include:

• How are hematopoietic stem cells formed during development?

• Can we mimic that process in the tissue culture dish?

• Does embryonic blood have regenerative medicine potential?

Hematopoietic development

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are multipotent stem cells that replenish the entire suite of blood cells needed throughout adult life, and are important for cell replacement therapies and disease modeling studies. However, donor “match” limitations, and poor in vitro expansion conditions, remain significant bottlenecks to their full translational potential. Thus, our ultimate goal is the transgene-free derivation of HSCs from human (patient-specific) pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs), for “bench and bedside” use. But, this goal remains unrealized, due to an incomplete understanding of embryonic hematopoiesis. We aim to delineate the origins and temporal signaling requirements of in vitro definitive hematopoietic development.

Translational potential of embryonic blood progenitors

Natural killer (NK) cells recognize and kill virally infected cells and tumor cells, making them a critical component of innate immunity and a highly desirable cell-type for adoptive immunotherapy.  However, clinical trials have only been successful for a subset of patients, likely due, in part, to the enormous degree of NK cell heterogeneity across donors.  As such, hPSC-derived NK cells offer the potential of uniform activity in a renewable “off-the-shelf” cell product.  Though our use of a novel in vitro, stage-specific hPSC differentiation approach, we have mapped the developmental origins of embryonic NK cells, and characterize their functional potential.