Science Breaks: The bloody battle against leukaemia

Join Professor Cristina Lo Celso as she discusses her efforts in stem cell biology in the bloody battle against leukaemia.

Science Breaks: The bloody battle against leukaemia

During our lifetime blood stem cells produce more cells than there are stars in the universe. Unfortunately, sometimes this process goes wrong and it’s here that leukaemia can develop in our bone marrow.

What goes wrong, and how the leukaemia takes advantage to eliminate blood cell production is an area of active research, as is investigating the theory that severe infections like malaria can have long term haematological consequences, leaving recovered patients susceptible to blood diseases. This later questions raise worrying possibilities for the legacy of COVID-19, whilst the former is vital to improving the success rate of blood cancer treatments.

Cristina Lo Celso is a professor of stem cell biology at Imperial College London. She uses advanced microscopy techniques to watch how leukaemia and healthy cells fight for space within mouse bone marrow, and how stresses such as infection affect this tissue. In her Science Breaks talk she will take viewers onto this battleground to look at how leukaemia changes this microenvironment and how the ‘scars’ of infection diseases might be indicative of blood disease susceptibility, and could be used for interventionary proactive treatment.

Biography

Cristina Lo Celso graduated from Torino University in Italy. She obtained her PhD from UCL, working with Fiona Watt at the CRUK London Research Institute, where she studied epidermal stem cells. She started performing intravital microscopy of the haematopoietic stem cell (HSC) niche during her postdoctoral training at Harvard University with David Scadden. In 2009 she started her independent research group at Imperial College London, where she is now a professor in the department of Life Sciences, and one of the network leads of the Imperial Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Network. Prof. Lo Celso recently established a satellite laboratory at the Sir Francis Crick Institute. Her research aims to understand the mechanisms regulating HSC function during steady state and during stresses such as infections, leukaemia and transplantation. Her interdisciplinary approach combines mouse bone marrow intravital microscopy techniques, computational image analysis, molecular profiling and mathematical modelling of the HSC niche. Prof. Lo Celso is the first woman to receive the Foulkes Medal award (2017), received the ISEH New Investigator award in 2017, presented the DGZ Carl Zeiss Lecture 2018 and received the Royal Microscopical Society Life Sciences Medal 2019.

Science Breaks

Science Breaks is a virtual event series showcasing the impact and relevance of Imperial's research and work taking place at the College.

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