Stem cell and leukaemia proteomics
Led by Professor Tony Whetton and Dr Elaine Spooncer
Haemopoietic stem cells reside in the bone marrow and have the potential to form mature blood cells of many different kinds. Due to the constant losses of billions of blood cells every day from our peripheral blood and tissues there is an absolute requirement to produce replacement cells at a huge rate per hour. However, the number of stem cells remains unchanged throughout our life. These apparently contradictory states are maintained by the ability of stem cells to do one of two things on division: to form exact copies of themselves (known as self-renewal) or, alternatively, to differentiate to form mature cells (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Relationship between normal stem cells and leukaemic stem cells.
Unfortunately, in the case of haematological malignancies the balance between self-renewal and differentiation is disturbed. The ability to form mature, functional blood cells is compromised whilst a leukaemic clone takes over the bone marrow, which is the site of blood cell production (haemopoiesis). It is also now clear that the myeloid leukaemias, on which we work, are stem-cell diseases. That is to say the stem cells are adversely affected by some mutation and thereby start on a progressive road to full malignant transformation. Of necessity, additional mutational events occur before the full leukaemic transformation is manifest. So we have normal stem cells and we have leukaemic stem cells, their relationship is shown in Figure 1.
Our work essentially addresses the issue of how these populations are different from one another and whether these differences offer us strategies to adversely affect the malignant stem cell and not the normal stem cell.
Further information
Principal investigators
| Name | Job title | Email address |
|---|---|---|
| Tony Whetton | Head of School of Cancer and Imaging Sciences / Professor of Cancer Cell Biology | Tony.Whetton@manchester.ac.uk |
| Elaine Spooncer | Senior Lecturer | elaine.spooncer@manchester.ac.uk |