simply blood

On behalf of the ISEH Publications Committee, we would like to wish you Happy Holidays!   Visit www.iseh.org for more information on ISEH's membership, events and webinars. Don't forget to save the date in 2019 for the ISEH Annual Scientific Meeting, 22 - 25 August 2019. 

Exploring Experimental Hematology:   Unboxing "Tet2 restrains inflammatory gene expression in macrophages" By Cull et al. In this issue of Simply Blood, Anna Beaudin is Exploring Experimental Hematology and highlighting and deconstructing one of her favorite manuscripts from the ISEH society journal: "Tet2 restrains inflammatory gene expression in macrophages " By Cull et al. My reason for reading this paper: It provides a new perspective on mechanisms of pathology attributed to Clonal Hematopoiesis of Indeterminate Potential (CHIP), which is so hot right now.  CHIP has been implicated not only in blood disorders including leukemias, but also more recently in cardiovascular disease.  The mechanisms that drive clonal hematopoiesis from hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells is of intense interest in the field, and the study of mutations that drive clonal dominance have identified mutations in TET2 as a driver of CHIP. TET2 encodes an epigenetic regulator of hydr...

Each month, Simply Blood spotlights a lab focused on the research of basic hematology, immunology, stem cell research, cell and gene therapy, and other related aspects.  Get to know these different labs around the world! This month, we are featuring the Doulatov Lab at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington (USA). How long have you had your lab?  It has been just over two years since I started at the University of Washington. How many members make up your lab?  Students/postdocs? Currently, our group consists of two postdocs, a student, a research scientist, an undergraduate, and a lab manager. What is the major research theme of your lab? We use primary human stem cells and pluripotent stem cells to understand basic biology of hematopoiesis, blood development, and disease. What is the most exciting project in your lab right now? Our most exciting projects uses patient iPS cells to model neoplasia, such as myelodysplastic syndromes and leukemias. Exi...

I have to say right at the beginning that this is not a blog. I would say that this is just a collection of positive, happy thoughts from people who love ISEH and enjoy the annual meeting (Don’t we all!). We asked one simple question: “What did you like most about the ISEH meeting in Los Angeles?” Here are some opinions from different people from different places including students, postdocs and faculty. Read it and maybe next time you can join us! Timm Schroeder: 'Open air poster session with great science and under the California sun' Peggy Goodell: “The best moment for me was realizing that 4 of my former trainees, now well-respected independent investigators in the field  (Challen, Bowman, King, McKinney-Freeman), were there, along with some of their trainees and friends and colleagues. I enjoyed getting to know their networks and hearing about their trainees’ work.” Eva Fast: “Best moment of ISEH was definitely the poster session outside. The science (+ a littl...

Each month, Simply Blood spotlights a lab focused on the research of basic hematology, immunology, stem cell research, cell and gene therapy, and other related aspects.  Get to know these different labs around the world! This month, we are featuring the Perié Lab at the Curie Institute in Paris (France). Leïla Perié works as a principal investigator in the biophysics department of the Curie Institute in Paris (France). Her research combines advanced experimental cell tracking techniques and modeling to study hematopoiesis. She received an engineering degree in food science, as well as a PhD in experimental immunology, bringing new insight to immune cell geo-localization dynamics in the human spleen during HIV infection. Leïla then pursued postdoctoral training in experimental, computation and mathematical approaches to hematopoiesis funded by a European Marie Curie Fellowship. She was sharing her time between the Schumacher lab at NKI (Amsterdam) and the De Boer lab at Utre...

Image Credits* I guess we have all eaten sandwiches. Personally, I have a love-hate relationship with them. They can be tasty, healthy, diverse, and most of all easy and effortless to make. They can also be extremely messy while you are eating them. This is because of quirky fact about sandwiches: I always associate them with PRESSURE. Because, if you think about it, there are roughly three parts on a sandwich: a slice of bread, the stuffing and another slice of bread. A sandwich is basically a handheld mini-pressure machine. It is almost certain that if you put pressure on one of the parts, the pressure will be transferred to the other parts. There is no other way to eat it- unless you disassemble the sandwich, but then the advantages of the sandwich are lost. By now you might be thinking you are reading a foodie blog, but the point of this blog is not the food but how the sandwich reminds me of the current paradigm for academic science. Each step in our careers can be considered...

We have all felt the inertia when we need to write – whether it’s an abstract, paper, report or grant – and it can feel daunting and hard to get started. We feel like we need a big slot of time, or we need to have all the conditions just right (if you are anything like me - quiet, a cup of tea, and tidy desk) or that there’s just one more experiment that we need to complete before we sit down and begin.     And, what happens when we do not get started? We lose the momentum of our greatest ideas. We end up working closer to deadlines and under pressure, which may not create our best work.  Or worse, if there’s no deadline (for example, when you are writing a paper), we end up putting it off and suddenly we’ve been scooped, or the data has lost its vitality. During my 15 years of organizing, editing and developing grants with leading scientists, I have learned that writing is a process. Learning how we approach writing and the roadblocks that come up for us ...

Each month, Simply Blood spotlights a lab focused on the research of basic hematology, immunology, stem cell research, cell and gene therapy, and other related aspects.  Get to know these different labs around the world! This month, we are featuring the Passegué Lab at Columbia University in New York City, USA. How long have you had your lab? I got officially hired by the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in December 2005, but I didn’t hire my first lab member until March 2006. My lab relocated to Columbia University in New York City last year. How many members make up your lab? Students/postdocs? Since the relocation, my lab consists of 4 postdocs, 1 MD/PhD fellow, 1 graduate student, 1 lab manager and a junior tech, as well as a number rotating students and interns. What is the major research theme of your lab? The big question is regulation of blood production. All the current projects further fit under two axes – 1) emergency myelopoiesis and regenerat...

We are beginning a new blog series on SimplyBlood called “Exploring Experimental Hematology .” Here we will highlight and deconstruct some our favorite manuscripts from the ISEH society journal. Welcome to entry 1. If you are a millennial or are raising a post-millennial you must be familiar with unboxing YouTube videos where you can watch someone open a new item and then explain the item in detail. While I might not fully understand why my kids enjoy watching other kids open toys, I do get the excitement of sharing my thoughts and deconstructing a new and exciting Experimental Hematology article for the community. In this blog, I'll be exploring the review “ Hematopoietic stem cell fate through metabolic control ” by Kyoko Ito and Keisuke Ito. My reason for reading the paper: They have provided us with an excellent review on HSC and metabolism that is a must read for anyone in the HSC field. I still remember the first time I heard a Toshio Suda talk about hematopoietic ...

The 47th Annual International Society for Experimental Hematology meeting took place in sunny Los Angeles, California, August 23-26th. The exciting program ( https://www.iseh.org/page/2018Program ) included career and technology sessions, as well as talks and poster presentations from trainees, new investigators and leaders in the field. On behalf of the ISEH Board of Directors, volunteers and staff, we'd like to thank our 2018 sponsors and exhibitors, seen below. We hope to see you all in Brisbane in 2019! Thank you to our 2018 Platinum Sponsors Thank you to our 2018 Gold Sponsors   Thank you to our 2018 Silver Sponsor Thank you to our 2018 Educational Support Sponsors   ANONYMOUS DONATIONS MADE IN MEMORY OF: Dr. Michael Lill , Dr. Ihor Lemischka Thank you to our 2018 Exhibitors                    

Each month, Simply Blood spotlights a lab focused on the research of basic hematology, immunology, stem cell research, cell and gene therapy, and other related aspects.  Get to know these different labs around the world! This month, we are featuring the Ding Lab at Columbia University. How long have you had your lab? I started in February 2013. So a little over 5 years. How many members make up your lab? Students/postdocs? There are four graduate students and one postdoc in the lab currently. I would like to have another postdoc or two. That will be the ideal composition of my ‘dream’ lab. What is the major research theme of your lab? We investigate the molecular and cellular mechanisms, particular extrinsic mechanisms, that regulate hematopoietic stem cell function. We also study how these mechanisms contribute to hematological diseases. What's your best approach to mentoring students in the lab? Everyone is different. I try to tailor my mentoring style to each s...

A funny thing happened to me the other day – I got the official notice that my promotion to Associate Professor of Medicine with tenure was approved (Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis).  It was all very anticlimactic, just a letter that showed up in my internal mailbox.  There was no phone call from the Dean or the Chair of the Department of Medicine, no big party, no fanfare – just a signed letter staring back at me.  It was a very surreal experience.  This is something most of us strive for and work so hard towards and then when the moment arrives, it was all very … meh. Sometimes it still doesn’t seem real, I keep waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder saying … oops we made a mistake.  I go to meetings and conferences and see all the amazing work being done by my colleagues, contemporaries and collaborators and it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed.  So much of the world’s cutting edge research is being done in hematology that a...

Welcome back to the blog series “Things Nobody Told me About Being a PI”.  In part 1 , we covered financial/administrative management.  Part 2 dealt with personnel/team management.  In the final installment, I would like to touch on an issue which was a big personal adjustment for me. Something that was completely unexpected for me as a new PI was a sense of loneliness.  As a post-doc, you are probably used to working in a busy lab, maybe in a bay of 2-3 other trainees all bustling around doing experiments.  This builds a sense of comradery as you bond over failed experiments, talk about exciting new papers, and maybe plan what beers you are going to try at happy hour that afternoon.  As a new PI, you often spend a lot of time alone in your office - writing grants / papers, attending to the masses of incoming email, and handling all your regulatory protocols.  Even though you might be surrounded by people running around in the lab, and even other P...