Zohar Sachs, MD, PhD

Acute myeloid leukemia stem calls
My lab’s goal is to identify molecular mechanisms of leukemia stem cell self-renewal in primary murine and human acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Self-renewal is a feature of leukemia stem cells that allow them to recapitulate leukemia and cause relapse. Since AML cells are highly heterogenous, we specialize in the application of single-cell, high throughput technologies (including mass cytometry/CyTOF and single-cell RNA sequencing) to address these research questions.

My earlier work demonstrated that the activated NRAS oncogene mediates self-renewal in AML and that individual leukemia cells vary significantly in their functional status and ability to self-renew (Sachs et al. Blood 2014). Recently, we defined the gene expression profile of AML self-renewal at the single-cell level and used this data to identify a functionally unique subset of leukemia cells with leukemia-repopulating potential. We are using these approaches to identify effective therapeutic targets for this deadly disease.