Home Department: Bioengineering
Mentor: Charles Gawad (Pediatrics - Oncology & Hematology)

“Multiomic Study of Chemotherapy Resistant B-Cells from Pediatric Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Patient Bone Marrow"

Leukemia is the most common childhood cancer in the U.S. with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) accounting for 25% of cancers in ages 1-4. 10% of children with ALL relapse due to drug resistance. The current methods of studying drug resistance in pediatric ALL, including bulk sequencing, limit our ability to identify mutations in rare cell populations. The Gawad lab is investigating drug resistance at the single cell level using PTA, a single-cell amplification technology that recovers >95% of the genome and transcriptome, to identify unique mutations and pathways in drug-resistant cells to inform us of combinational chemotherapies that can combat resistance.