Dr. Andrew Elefanty’s research uses human pluripotent stem cells to study the development of blood cells and diseases of the blood system. Mimicking the diseases in the lab allows testing of new combinations of drugs that could more effectively treat leukemias or stimulate blood growth in children with bone marrow failure.

Dr. Elizabeth Ng’s work has identified that the expression of the HOXA genes during differentiation is crucial for generating haematopoietic cells with a transcriptional profile similar to the ‘preHSCs’ seen in the aorta-gonad mesonephros region of the human embryo. Her current work focuses upon the challenge of maturing these cells further to produce engraftable HSCs and to develop in vitro ‘niches’ that mimic the bone marrow in order to sustain them.

Together and with their collaborators, Drs. Ng and Elefanty have made important contributions to the generation of genetically modified human stem cell lines in which lineage-specific fluorescent reporters allow monitoring of differentiation.