Home Department: undeclared
Mentors: Calvin Kuo (Medicine - Hematology) and Emma Lundberg (Bioengineering and Pathology)

“Development of a Patient-Derived Bone Marrow Organoid Model System to Study the Leukemia-Specific Microenvironment"

Leukemia is a deadly blood cancer that disrupts normal blood cell production by taking over the bone marrow “niche,” which consists of various cell types including stromal cells and hematopoietic cells. Dysregulated communication between these cell types has been implicated in leukemia pathogenesis. However, current research model systems fail to replicate the complexity of the bone marrow microenvironment. Vivian’s project aims to develop a novel bone marrow “organoid” model system derived from patient samples in order to study how leukemia alters the native bone marrow niche to promote disease progression and therapy resistance.