At this year's annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), held December 11-14 in Atlanta, Georgia, Andreas Trumpp delivered the prestigious Ham-Wasserman Lecture.

In his lecture, the stem cell researcher reported on differences and similarities between normal and leukemic stem cells. The honor of speaking at the Ham-Wasserman Lecture at the ASH Annual Meeting is considered one of the most prestigious awards in the field of hematology. It is traditionally bestowed upon a physician or researcher outside the United States who has contributed significantly to the understanding and advancement of hematology worldwide.

The invitation to Andreas Trumpp was in recognition of his important work on leukemia stem cells.

Hamed Alborzinia from Andreas Trumpp lab and his colleague Andres Florez Amaya of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University, published a book on ferroptosis entitled Ferroptosis: Mechanism and Diseases. Ferroptosis is a specific metabolic form of iron-mediated cell death that has recently been linked to a variety of diseases and patho-mechanisms. The main goal of this book -according to the authors- is to make ferroptosis quickly accessible, so anyone who dives into any of the chapters can readily understand the pathway. To start, foreword by Scott Dixon one of the scientists who discovered ferroptosis gives as strong motivation on why the study of ferroptosis is therapeutically promising. In the first chapter, the authors illustrate how ferroptosis is connected to other forms of cell death, which can facilitate the understanding and help integrate the information processed in the other chapters. The book dives into different pathologies, starting with pancreatic cancer as one of the hardest cancers to treat and that shows promise to be treated with ferroptosis induction. Infectious diseases, including COVID-19, and their connections with ferroptosis are addressed elegantly by the authors. In between, the role of iron and ferritinophagy which are becoming more and more crucial in explaining the ferroptotic mechanisms are described. The book also offers valuable collection of all currently known activators or inhibitors of ferroptosis. It will enable researchers to choose molecules for experimental design for in vitro and in vivo studies of ferroptosis. Finally, the authors explore the connection of ferroptosis to other cell death pathways such as necroptosis, some crosslinks might appear that are interesting not only biologically but therapeutically by using synergistic compounds to induce both pathways.

 

A new method called MutaSeq allows stem cells and cancer stem cells to be studied at the single cell level and the resulting cell clones to be traced directly. The method was developed by scientists from HI-STEM, the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the Center for Genome Regulation in Barcelona. Studying thousands of individual cells in parallel, the researchers combined the analysis of the genomic cancer mutations with the associated expression profiles.

Further Reading:

  • Publication: Velten L, Story BA, Hernández-Malmierca P, Raffel S, Leonce DR, Milbank J, Paulsen M, Demir A, Szu-Tu C, Frömel R, Lutz C, Nowak D, Jann JC, Pabst C, Boch T, Hofmann WK, Müller-Tidow C, Trumpp A, Haas S, Steinmetz LM. Identification of leukemic and pre-leukemic stem cells by clonal tracking from single-cell transcriptomics. Nature Communication. 2021 Mar 1;12(1):1366. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-21650-1. PMID: 33649320; PMCID: PMC7921413.
  • DKFZ Press Release

Previously, extensive research has focused on hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and distinct multipotent progenitor populations (MPP1-4) contained within the Lin- Sca-1+ c-Kit+ (LSK) compartment. In this new study, researchers around Pia Sommerkamp now phenotypically define and functionally characterize MPP5 (LSK CD34+ CD135- CD48- CD150-), a novel subset in the progenitor landscape. The team, which involved colleagues at the Max-Planck Institute in Freiburg, at the Institute Curie in Paris and at Harvard University, reports that MPP5 provide initial emergency myelopoiesis followed by stable contribution to the lymphoid lineage in transplantation settings. Using different in vitroand in vivo approaches as well as RNA-seq and single-cell (sc) RNA-seq analysis, MPP5 were shown to represent a hub within the MPP network.

The work was co-supervised by Andreas Trumpp from HI-STEM/DKFZ and Nina Cabezas-Wallscheid, HI-STEM Alumni and now a junior group leader at the Max-Planck-Institute of Immunobiology in Freiburg, and was published in Blood.

 

 

Further Reading:

Publication: Sommerkamp, P., Romero-Mulero, M. C., Narr, A., Ladel, L., Hustin, L., Schonberger, K., Renders, S., Altamura, S., Zeisberger, P., Jacklein, K., Klimmeck, D., Rodriguez-Fraticelli, A., Camargo, F. D., Perie, L., Trumpp, A. & Cabezas-Wallscheid, N. (2021) Mouse multipotent progenitor 5 cells are located at the interphase between hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells, Blood. 137, 3218-3224. doi: 10.1182/blood.2020007876 PMID: 33754628

A characteristic feature of all stem cells is their ability to self-renew. But how is this potential maintained throughout life? Scientists at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the Heidelberg Institute for Stem Cell Technology and Experimental Medicine (HI-STEM) have now discovered in mice that cells in the so-called "stem cell niche" are responsible for this: Blood vessel cells of the niche produce a factor that stimulates blood stem cells and thus maintains their self-renewal capacity. With the decades of life, the production of this factor ceases and blood stem cells begin to age.

The work was led by Simon Renders, a MD-PhD Student who carried out his PhD thesis in the HI-STEM lab.

Read more:

  • Original Publication: Renders, S., Svendsen, A. F., Panten, J., Rama, N., Maryanovich, M., Sommerkamp, P., Ladel, L., Redavid, A. R., Gibert, B., Lazare, S., Ducarouge, B., Schönberger, K., Narr, A., Tourbez, M., Dethmers-Ausema, B., Zwart, E., Hotz-Wagenblatt, A., Zhang, D., Korn, C., Zeisberger, P., Przybylla, A., Sohn, M., Mendez-Ferrer, S., Heikenwälder, M., Brune, M., Klimmeck, D., Bystrykh, L., Frenette, P. S., Mehlen, P., de Haan, G., Cabezas-Wallscheid, N.*, & Trumpp, A.* (2021). Niche derived netrin-1 regulates hematopoietic stem cell dormancy via its receptor neogenin-1. Nature Communications, 12(1), 608. 10.1038/s41467-020-20801-0
  • DKFZ Press Release / DKFZ Pressemitteilung
  1. HI-STEM Researchers discover new pancreatic cancer subtypes with different aggressiveness – Publication in Cancer Discovery
  2. Pia Sommerkamp receives Wilma-Moser Prize
  3. 8th GSCN Conference - goes virtual
  4. Hidden messages in mRNA transcripts: Alternative polyadenylation (APA) is a novel control mechanism enabling hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) to adapt their activity to emergency situations– new publication in Cell Stem Cell
  5. How tumor cells create a metastatic niche – new work from the Oskarsson lab published in Nature Communications
  6. LeukoSystem: New BMBF-funded eMed Junior Consortium to investigate leukaemia causes and therapies
  7. German Cancer Prize Awarded to Andreas Trumpp
  8. New paper out on Nature Cell Biology: 3D atlas of the bone marrow - in single cell resolution
  9. Andreas Trumpp recognized as Highly Cited Researcher 2019
  10. ÜBERLEBENSSTRATEGIEN: Science Communication Event with colleagues from the Stem Cell SFB (CRC873)
  11. Mick elected into representative roles within both EHA and ASH.
  12. Making cancer stem cells visible to the immune system - New results may enable innovative treatment concept against leukemia (New publication in Nature)

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