Speaker: Raquel Espin Palazon, Iowa State University assistant professor in genetics, development and cell biology

Title: Inflammatory signaling to make blood: who, when and why?

Abstract: We discovered a decade ago that inflammatory signaling was required to create blood stem cells. Although we generate our blood stem cells only once during embryonic development, they will produce all blood cell types for life, enabling the proper oxygenation, nutrition, immune protection, and waste removal of tissues and organs. In this tenure talk, I will summarize the work my group has done at Iowa State University to finally resolve why the embryo utilizes inflammatory signaling to create stem cells, and which of these signals contribute to their differentiation and function. I will also present data on how our investigations are helping integrate inflammatory signaling dynamics into in vitro protocols of human blood stem cell generation. These refined protocols will power future disease models and clinical interventions to treat devastating disorders such as leukemia, lymphoma, and anemia.

Host: Yanhai Yin, GDCB chair