Benjamin Povinelli

My research is focused on normal and malignant hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs).  To understand the function of normal HSCs in blood production I study the role of cell cycle in HSC development.  By using single cell appraoches we are able to learn how the cell cycle is transcriptionaly regulated across development from fetal to adult life.  This is important as many of these same genes are expressed by leukemia stem cells, the disease propating population in many blood malignancies.  One such leukemia we have focused on is Juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia (JMML), which is a rare childhood disease with poor prognosis. I have been using a combination of approaches to identify and characterize the JMML leukemia stem cell, a critical step in developing therapies for treating this disease.