Defining Features of Relapse Predictive Cells in ALL
Mentor: Kara Davis
Relapsed leukemia remains a leading cause of cancer related death in children. In order to improve outcomes for children with leukemia, better approaches to detect and prevent relapse are urgently needed. Our laboratory has approached that challenge through the use of single-cell, high dimensional technologies. Through our studies, we have used mass cytometry (CyTOF) to discover and define a population of leukemia cells that are present and detectable in a patient at the time of their diagnosis. This population was found to be predictive of future relapse. Now, we are working to determine what makes these cells prone to cause relapse and to discover easier ways to identify them within the billions of leukemia cells present at diagnosis.
