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...