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2021 Interview Spotlight Series: Part I

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This week on Simply Blood we are kicking off our 2021 Interview Spotlight Series. In Part I we are featuring the ISEH 2021 New Investigator’s Invitee: Dan Landau, M.D, Ph.D. Here, Dr. Landau answers questions about his scientific passions, unusual but highly successful career path, mentorship and more. Interested in hearing more about Dr. Landau’s fascinating work? Don’t miss his session at this year’s ISEH Virtual Scientific Meeting ! 1. What is your key scientific question? What do you consider as your major contribution to the field over the past 5 years? The lab’s key scientific question is exploring the fundamental principles of human somatic evolution. We are fascinated by the realization that the trillions of cells in our body continuously evolve throughout life, with significant implication to human health and disease. Cancer represents an extreme case of human somatic evolution where in a “runaway process” cells evolve more rapidly at the expense of the multi-cellular host. O
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COVID-19 Lockdown Effects on Research in Melbourne

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Australia has been relatively lucky in the current pandemic because, to date, we have managed to eliminate community transmissions of COVID. We did, however, experience significant community transmission in Melbourne (and some other parts of Australia) in 2020. The people of Melbourne (a city of approximately 5 million people) were subjected to strict lockdowns that has, fortunately, been successful. I have been asked to give a first-hand account of the local situation and the impact on researchers in Melbourne. Our first lockdown commenced on 24th March. Social distancing measures were put in place everywhere. We were permitted to leave our homes for 2 hours daily for exercise and shopping, although it was advised to limit shopping and preferably only have one household member do the shopping. Our second, harsh lockdown commenced on 9th July and continued through the end of October. We were allowed one hour of exercise outside per day (restricted to a 5km limit) and only one household
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Lab Spotlight: The Ottersbach Lab

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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 Ottersbach Lab at the Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh! 1. How long have you had your lab for? I established my lab first in Cambridge in September 2006 and then I moved the lab to Edinburgh in March 2015. Overall, I had my own lab for almost 15 years now. 2. What's the major research theme of your lab and what's one of the most exciting projects that is either ongoing or that you did in the past? When I first started off, my lab continued work I had started during my postdoc, characterizing how blood, especially blood stem cells, develop in the embryo in mouse models. I still love that subject, but I have currently only one PhD student working on that topic. But what I realized at some point was th
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ISEH 2021-2022 Board of Directors Election Results

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ISEH members* have sent in their votes, and we are pleased to share with you the results of the 2021 Board of Directors elections. The individuals, identified below, will join the ISEH Board of Directors in September 2021. Please join us in congratulating these new and returning members of ISEH Leadership! Marella de Bruijn University of Oxford, United Kingdom Vice President Carl Walkley Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research, Australian Catholic University, Australia Director - Pacific Rim Nina Cabezas-Wallscheid Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics, Germany Director - Europe/Middle East/Africa Jennifer Trowbridge The Jackson Laboratory, United States of America Director - Americas
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Exploring Experimental Hematology: Journal Crossover Series II

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In a bid to connect the research being published in  Experimental Hematology  with the wider hematological community, we have begun to identify related pairs of recently published articles from other journals and in this entry, we focus on an article published in the European Hematology Association's journal  HemaSphere. Molecular insight into Diamond-Blackfan anemia (DBA), and a detection strategy for clinical diagnosis of DBA and other inherited bone marrow failure syndromes Inherited bone marrow failure syndromes (IBMFs) are a group of complex genetic diseases that display comparable major complications such as (pan)cytopenia, bone marrow failure, and increased risks for myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Although a majority of patients receive proper diagnoses, many patients lack specific syndromic diagnoses in part due to incomplete identification of the underlying etiology of IBMFs. Therefore, further studies into the genetic, molecular, and clin
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Message from the President: 2021 Society Updates

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Dear Friends and Colleagues, I write this message reflecting upon what was an unprecedented time for hematology and hematology researchers. Looking back on last year, I am truly amazed by how our Society reacted to our member’s experiences with lab shutdowns, socioeconomic upheaval in reaction to political injustice, travel restrictions and economic hardships. This period may compare to the years in which the society was founded (early 1970s), when concerns about nuclear disasters fueled radiation research, hematology and the further development of concepts around hematopoietic stem cell biology. Not only did we come together as a community this last year and implement many new initiatives to support our members, but we re-organized our annual meeting with short notice to adapt to the new virtual reality, and now are forging ahead with a new improved ISEH virtual 2.0 meeting for 2021. In this last year, many of our members have also independently developed new meeting and seminar forum
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An Interview with Dr. Derrick Rossi, Co-Founder of Moderna Therapeutics

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In 2012, Dr. Rossi was the inaugural New Investigators Invited Speaker at the 41st Annual Scientific Meeting of ISEH. He generously agreed to be interviewed by a member of the New Investigator Committee about his captivating career path and successes in translating discoveries to the clinic. Among Dr. Rossi’s numerous accomplishments, we can list the development of an approach to generate induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSCs) using synthetic modified messenger RNA, which was named by Time magazine as one of the top ten medical breakthroughs of 2010. Dr. Rossi leveraged that technology to found Moderna Therapeutics, which is now a major supplier of vaccines against COVID-19. In 2015, Dr. Rossi co-founded Intellia Therapeutics, a publicly traded Cambridge-based company focused on developing CRISPR/Cas9-based therapeutics. In 2016, he co-founded Magenta Therapeutics, which is focused on transforming hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. In 2017, he helped launch Convelo Therapeutics,
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