Dr. Shizuru's research interests are to understand the cellular and molecular basis of resistance to engraftment of transplanted allogeneic bone marrow (BM) cells and to understand the way in which BM grafts modify immune responses. This research complements her group's interest in clinical BM transplantation and aspects of these studies are aimed at solving some of the major problems of BM transplantation which include graft-vs-host disease and BM engraftment failure. Conventional BM transplantation involves the transfer of heterogeneous populations of cells composed of rare hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and differentiated blood cell types. To study these issues, the lab's approach has been to transplant phenotypically purified cells under defined conditions.