Dr. Júlia Aguadé Gorgorió aim to investigate how the HLF gene regulates both blood and leukaemia stem cells, a pathway toward discovering new cures for acute myeloid leukaemia (AML).

Blood stem cells (also known as hematopoietic stem cells, or HSCs) give rise to all the different types of blood cells in the body without becoming depleted, thanks to their capacity for self-renewal.

In AML, one of the deadliest blood cancers, which affects 2,000 new patients per year in Spain, a subset of AML cells mimics the self-renewal capacity of HSCs. These are known as leukemic stem cells (LSCs). Understanding these LSCs is crucial because they are responsible for resistance and relapse of the disease after therapy.