De Duve Institute

Support for the researchproject by Nick Van Gastel: Hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) acquire about one coding mutation per decade. Most are irrelevant, but rare mutations will lead to clonal HSC outgrowth. This does not cause disease directly, but increases the risk of blood cancer development. We hypothesize that the increased competitiveness of mutant HSCs is supported by changes in their metabolism. We will analyze the metabolic profile of mutant HSCs at pre-leukemic stages, define alterations and test strategies to eliminate mutant cells.