Acute leukemias remain one of the most devastating and costly cancers with less than one in five adult patients surviving 10 years and some childhood patients failing current treatments. There is a critical need for new approaches for investigating mechanisms of disease pathogenesis and new models to help translate basic findings into new and improved treatments. Specifically, those that effectively target leukemic cells while sparing normal blood forming cells. The long term goal of this project is to better understand the difference between normal blood forming cells and leukemic cells. The lab aims to identify and exploit vulnerable disease causing pathways that may be shared across different types of acute leukemias, which can then be translated into useful biomarkers and treatments that are more effective and less toxic.