Jonas Larsson

Our bone marrow contains a rare population of blood forming stem cells capable of sustaining a daily production of billions of mature blood cells throughout life. These blood stem cells are also responsible for the regeneration of the blood system following bone marrow transplantation. Bone marrow transplantation is a life-saving therapy for thousands of cancer patients each year but is also associated with significant risks and many patients cannot receive treatment due to insufficient numbers of stem cells. A better understanding of how blood stem cells are regulated would enable us to increase the numbers of stem cells prior to transplantation and thereby achieve better and safer therapies. Our laboratory investigates the genes and pathways that regulate the ability of blood stem cells to self-renew and thereby replicate themselves. Rather than studying one gene or one factor at the time we have developed methods that allow the functional testing of thousands of genes in parallel. Our aim is to identify the most significant regulators that are relevant to target in order to achieve stem cell expansion for clinical benefit.