simply blood

Hematology researchers are committed to replacing the use of laboratory animals with alternative methods, and where this is not possible, reducing the number of animals used, and refining care to minimise animal suffering (the 3Rs, https://nc3rs.org.uk). Reducing animal use addresses ethical concerns, the expectations of the public that fund research, as well as differences between hematopoiesis in humans versus the animals that we use to model them.   As blood is a liquid tissue, it can be acquired from human volunteers for research with minimal invasion. Donated human blood has been used extensively to make significant discoveries in coagulation, transfusion, and other fields of hematology. In contrast, the production of blood cells occurs in the complex and relatively inaccessible tissue of the bone marrow, and it has proven stubbornly difficult to recapitulate this process outside living organisms.    Much research on hematopoiesis has focussed on hematopoietic stem c...

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 Passaro Lab ( https://dianapassaro.wixsite.com/imaginiche ) at the Cochin Institute, France. What is the major research theme of your lab? I would say that the underlying question of our projects is understanding the intimate relationship between leukemia and the vascular endothelial microenvironment. Better understanding the niche involvement in hematological malignancies is a fairly hot topic, but only recently people have started looking into endothelial cells. I think they are a fascinating component of any tissue, especially the hematopoietic ones. How long have you had your lab? We started in January 2020, with the arrival of the first master student. From March 2020 we recruited three other members, and we just recently had anoth...

As we progress through our scientific career from undergraduate, then PhD to Post-doc, a key inflection point is the transition to an independent faculty position. The journey into this new career chapter is both exhilarating and challenging. On the one hand, you have seemingly limitless possibilities: you can choose your staff and mentor them however you wish, spend your funds to test your new research ideas and push out into new directions, and establish new collaborations and relationships in the field. On the other hand, your science will now need to be balanced with host of new responsibilities as a faculty member. You may find yourself asking how will you attract new staff to your group? How will you manage budgets for each of your projects and people? How will you manage your time as you balance responsibilities of institutional committees alongside publishing and obtaining funding to sustain your group for the long term? Finally, given the scope of your new position, how will y...

As research centres closed their doors, countries closed their borders and entire laboratories shut for many months, many of us tried to plan for one of the most significant transitions in our scientific path: looking for the perfect postdoc lab. This is no doubt one of the most difficult decisions during anyone’s academic career, but how to do that during a global pandemic? In this ISEH blogspot, I explore how new postdoctoral fellows moving across the world to join new laboratories have experienced the pandemic and how this is likely to impact their future scientific careers. Dawn Lin finished her PhD in Melbourne at the end of 2019, and right after, she started planning her future postdoc when COVID was about to take over the world. In November 2021, she had just began her postdoctoral position in the lab of Prof. Andreas Trumpp at the HI-STEM and DKFZ in Heidelberg, Germany. “ The pandemic has definitely changed my plan, and I decided to stay in Australia for a little longer. Init...

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 Van Galen Lab at the Division of Hematology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School located in Boston, MA, USA! How long have you had your lab? We started in August 2019. How many members make up your lab? Students/postdocs? There are currently six trainees. We have two postdocs, two technicians, a visiting PhD student and a part-time undergraduate student. What is the major research theme of your lab? In the broadest sense we focus on normal and malignant hematopoiesis. We develop and apply new technologies to study the process of hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) differentiation in human cells. A molecular understanding of changes that occur during aging and transformation of the blood system will inspire new therapies tha...

The ISEH community is deeply saddened by the recent loss of Dr. Paul Frenette, a revered member of the ISEH community and ISEH Past President. In order to honor and memorialize Dr. Paul Frenette in a long-lasting way, ISEH is in the process of launching the “Paul S. Frenette Fund”. The “Paul S. Frenette Fund” will be designed as an endowment, with a goal that its annual proceeds will be applied to generate an annual named “Paul S. Frenette Lecture” at the ISEH Annual Scientific Meeting, as well as towards travel grants in honor of Paul. These travel grants and lectures may be selected thematically, such as contributions submitted related to niche biology or sickle cell disease, or pioneering and visionary research in general that may be ahead of its time. If you would like to contribute to the “Paul S. Frenette Fund” or learn more, please visit the ISEH website at https://www.iseh.org/page/frenettefund . ISEH is a registered 501(c)3 organization in United States of America. ISEH will c...

Before writing the ISEH 2021 Virtual Scientific Meeting recap, we had a quick read-through of last year’s summary. One year ago, we were hoping that our first virtual ISEH meeting would also be our last. We couldn’t wait to see each other again in person, and this is still the case. We are now hopeful that the ISEH 2021 Virtual Scientific Meeting will be our last fully virtual meeting. Travel is becoming more realistic with increasing COVID vaccination rates, so we are already looking forward to meeting in-person in Edinburgh in 2022. One major advancement since last year: we have become experts at meeting virtually. Thanks to the hard work and contributions of many people, we had a fantastic Virtual Meeting for ISEH 2021! The science was ground-breaking, the speakers were excellent, the networking events were fun, and the educational sessions were, well, extremely educational. Here is a recap of what happened at the ISEH 50th Annual Scientific Meeting. Registration Firstly, let’s sta...

Our society takes great pride in supporting the work of young scientists who submit cutting-edge abstracts for discussion at the ISEH Annual Meeting. To this end, each year ISEH includes a New Investigator Session in which the Program Committee selects the six highest ranked abstracts to present an oral presentation along with a five minute Q&A. Presenters were reviewed by an anonymous panel of judges on the following criteria: presentation topic, presentation content, Q&A response, and overall presentation. The session awards prizes into two groups – student and postdoctoral fellow, with three prizes being awarded in each category. Congratulations to our 2021 New Investigator Award Winners! Students 1st Place Prize - Dirk van Bekkum Award Bianca Ulloa Albert Einstein College of Medicine, USA Definitive Hematopoietic Stem Cells Minimally Contribute to Embryonic Hematopoiesis 2nd Place Prize - T. Ray Bradley Award Emily Mitchell Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK Haematopoietic stem ...

    The ISEH Annual Meeting looks a bit different again this year. We're celebrating 50 years of our scientific meeting with an exciting program including 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 2021 sponsors and exhibitors, seen below. We hope to see you all in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK in 2022! Support for ISEH 2021 provided by: An independent medical education grant by Bristol-Myers Squibb. A grant from Genentech, a member of the Roche Group. A grant award from the National Institute Of Diabetes And Digestive And Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health. THANK YOU TO OUR 2021 PLATINUM SPONSORS THANK YOU TO OUR 2021 GOLD SPONSORS THANK YOU TO OUR 2021 SILVER SPONSORS THANK YOU TO OUR SUPPORTERS THANK YOU TO OUR EXHIBITORS  The views expressed in written conference materials or...

On behalf of ISEH, the International Society for Experimental Hematology, I would like to thank you for being a part of ISEH 2021. This year we begin the celebration of 50 years of unparalleled science as coalesced around a professional society and annual international meeting. While we are not able to meet in person in 2021, we hope that this virtual meeting provides an opportunity for you to re-connect with science and colleagues from around the world.    Through a combination of invited keynote speakers and oral presentations, the ISEH meeting boasts educational sessions on basic, translational and clinical hematology featuring internationally-renowned scientists as well as rising young investigators.  Presenting cutting-edge research is only one of the features of the Annual Meeting. To maximize presentations and audience engagement, we again continue the sessions we started last year called “Featured Posters.” These lightning talks to advertise posters again promise ...

The ISEH community is deeply saddened by the recent loss of Dr. Paul Frenette, the founding director and chair of the Ruth L. and David S. Gottesman Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Paul was a revered member of the ISEH community, having previously served as President in 2015 in addition to other leadership positions. Our deepest condolences extend to his family, colleagues at Einstein, and collaborators around the world who are suffering from this loss. More details about Paul’s remarkable career and scientific accomplishments can be found in an obituary in Experimental Hematology ( https://www.exphem.org/article/S0301-472X(21)00282-4/fulltext ). To accompany that piece, in this Simply Blood blog please find some additional testimonials and pictures. Dr. Meelad Dawlaty, Associate Professor, Albert Einstein College of Medicine. “Paul was always there for his trainees, staff and fellow faculty like a friend. A...

With Covid-19 came the widespread introduction of virtual conferences. While there are obvious advantages to virtual conferences including saving time and money on travel and increasing content accessibility to a larger and more diverse science community, this has come at a cost of decreased networking and less face-to-face interactions. are necessarily limited. This is particularly relevant for Poster presentation sessions, which are usually a hub for networking but now mostly occur through short, pre-recorded summaries with no actual discussion taking place. While solutions to the problem of networking vary from conference to conference, below are some general tips on how to still get the networking you enjoy out of virtual events. Come prepared As always, preparation is key. Scan the programme, abstracts and participant list for people you might want to connect with. Read up on their research to assess which sessions of the conference they will likely attend.  It is also useful ...

This week on Simply Blood we close out our 2021 Interview Spotlight Series! Part IV features the ISEH 2021 Donald Metcalf Award Winner:  Tony Green, Ph.D . Click below to listen as Dr. Green answers questions about his scientific passions, career path, mentorship and more. Interested in hearing more about Dr. Green's fascinating work?  Don’t miss his session at this year’s ISEH Virtual Scientific Meeting ! Tony Green, PhD Director, Wellcome-MRC Cabridge Stem Cell Institute Professor, Haematopoiesis and Myeloid Malignancies Cambridge Stem Cell Institute University of Cambridge stemcells.cam.ac.uk/people/pi/green Interviewed by Stephen Loughran of the  ISEH New Investigators Committee