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Lab Spotlight: Tikhonova Lab

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Each month, Simply Blood spotlights a lab contributing to the fields of hematology, immunology, stem cell research, cell and gene therapies, and more. Get to know groups doing cutting edge research from around the world! This month, we are featuring the Tikhonova Lab which is based out of the University of Toronto and Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Canada ( https://tikhonovalab.com ). How long have you had your lab and who is currently in your group? We started in August 2020 and have been growing ever since. Our diverse and multidisciplinary team has two postdoctoral fellows, two Ph.D. students, an animal technician, part-time computational scientific associate, and a lab manager. What made you interested in pursuing a career as an academic researcher? I always valued academic research as it affords me the freedom to pursue my own ideas. You are only limited by your imagination and, at times, technology. What is the major research theme of your lab and how did you choose your lab’
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ISEH 2022 Annual Scientific Meeting – Highlights from the New Investigators Committee

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For four days in September, more than 500 ISEH members travelled from 25 countries around the world to beautiful Edinburgh in Scotland for the ISEH Annual Scientific Meeting. Attendees were treated to an amazing program of speakers, and given the opportunity to network and present their work to the community in lively social events and poster sessions. The meeting also included events targeting the students and postdocs that make up the ISEH new investigator community. In this blog post, members of the ISEH New Investigator Committee summarize some of their meeting highlights: New Investigator Pre-Meeting Workshop The ISEH pre-meeting workshop allowed trainees to present their research and network within the community. We first heard five great talks from trainees, then all of the trainees presented posters. ISEH faculty were invited to the event to judge both the oral and poster presentations, so every trainee got to talk to at least three faculty about their work. The afternoon also
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Lab Spotlight: Sturgeon 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 Sturgeon Lab ( www.sturgeonlab.com )  at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai located in New York City, New York, USA. Sturgeon Lab at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Twitter: @Dr_Sturgeon How long have you had your lab? I first opened my lab at Washington University, in March of 2014.   We then moved to Mount Sinai in New York in August of 2020. What was your biggest transition from a post-doc to a group leader/lab PI? Or what do you miss most from your post-doc time? I remember being so overwhelmed and star-struck just seeing, for the first time, the space that was going to be my lab.   So much so, that I forgot to ask key questions about how things like renovations could be handled, HVAC and electrical limitat
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Exploring Experimental Hematology: June 2021 (Volume 98)

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DNA methylation therapy joins forces in IDH2 -mutant AML Isocitrate dehydrogenases 1 and 2 ( IDH1 /2) are frequently mutated in Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), with nearly 20% of patients carrying gain-of-function point mutations in these genes (Ley et al., 2013) . IDH2 is a metabolic enzyme that catalyzes the conversion of isocitrate to 2-oxoglutarate during the Krebs cycle. Patients carrying IDH2 gain-of-function mutations produce instead high levels of the oncometabolite 2-hydroxyglutarate (2-HG), which inhibits oxoglutarate-dependent enzymes such as the TET family of methylcytosine dioxygenases, responsible for active DNA demethylation (Xu et al., 2011) . As a consequence, IDH2 mutations in AML patients induce DNA hypermethylation and inhibit hematopoietic differentiation (Figueroa et al., 2010) . Azacytidine (AZA) and enasidenib (ENA) are commonly used AML therapies which induce DNA hypomethylation, albeit through different mechanisms. AZA is a nucleoside analog that inhibits
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