Group Leader:
Georges Lacaud
I graduated as a biotechnology engineer from the European Biotechnology School of Strasbourg (ESBS) in Strasbourg, France. I obtained my PhD from the University Louis Pasteur of Strasbourg, France and then did a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Jewish Medical Center in Denver, Colorado, USA studying early lymphoid cell development in Prof. Gordon Keller’s lab. I next moved to the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, NY, USA where I worked on early hematopoietic development. In 2003, I joined the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research as a junior group leader and I currently head the Stem Cell Biology group.
Postdoctoral Fellows:
Christophe Lancrin
Flor Perez-Campo
Cristina Ferreras
Michael Lie-A-Ling
Graduate Students:
Olga Tsoulaki
Monika Antkiewicz
Milena Mazan
Stem Cell Biology Group - Molecular regulation of early hematopoiesis
Insights into the molecular regulation of early hematopoiesis have come from targeting studies that identified specific genes as key regulators in this process. One such gene, AML1 (Runx1 or CBFα2) was originally identified in translocations associated with acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) and acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Translocations of AML1 and its cofactor CBFβ account for more than 30% of AML and 25-30% of ALL. Targeting studies in the mouse demonstrated that both Runx1 and CBFβ are essential for the generation of definitive hematopoietic progenitors and hematopoietic stem cells, but dispensable for primitive erythropoiesis. Heterozygous 'knock-in' of the fusion genes AML1-ETO and CBFβ-MYH11 generated by translocations display phenotypes nearly identical to the Runx1-/- and CBFβ -/- embryos.
