Our group is interested in comparative analyses of normal lymphocyte development and malignant transformation towards leukemia. We cover research areas with relevance to both Immunology and Hematology/Cancer Biology. Our research involves experiments with primary human leukemia cells, leukemia and stem cell transplantation models, mouse genetics, classical molecular and cell biology, a strong emphasis on signal transduction and large-scale data analysis and computational biology.

Methods/Techniques:

Flow cytometry, mass spectrometry/quantitative phospho-profiling, CyTOF, mouse genetics, bone marrow transplantation assays, retroviral gene delivery, whole exome sequencing and RNA-seq-analysis of clonal evolution of leukemia, pre-clinical drug testing in xenotransplantation models.

Examples of recent work:

Swaminathan S, Huang C, Geng H, Chen Z, Ng C, Nowak D, Rand V, Graeber TG, Koeffler HP, Carroll WL, Willman CL, Hall AG, Igarashi K, Melnick A & Müschen M. BACH2 mediates negative selection and p53-dependent tumor suppression at the pre-B cell receptor checkpoint. Nature Medicine 19: in press (2013)

Ramezani-Rad P, Geng H, Jumaa H, Melnick A, Paietta E, Carroll WL, Willman CL, Lefebvre V & Müschen M. SOX4 enables oncogenic survival signals in acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Blood. 121: 148-55 (2013).
http://bloodjournal.hematologylibrary.org/content/121/1/148.full.pdf+html

Duy C, Hurtz C, Shojaee S, Cerchietti L, Geng H, Klemm L, Kim YM, Jumaa H, Koeffler HP, Yu JJ, Heisterkamp N, Graeber TG, Wu H, Ye BH, Melnick A & Müschen M. BCL6 enables Ph+ acute lymphoblastic leukemia cells to survive BCR-ABL1 kinase inhibition. Nature 473: 384-388 (2011)
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v473/n7347/pdf/nature09883.pdf

Hurtz C, Hatzi K, Cerchietti L, Kim YM, Herzog S, Ramezani-Rad P, Jumaa H, Müller MC, Hofmann WK, Hochhaus A, Druker BJ, Shah NP, Melnick AM & Müschen M. BCL6-mediated repression of p53 is critical for leukemia stem cell survival in chronic myeloid leukemia. J Exp Med. 208: 2163-2174 (2011)
http://jem.rupress.org/content/208/11/2163.full.pdf+html

Duy C, Yu J, Polo JM, Klemm L, Cerchietti L, Melnick A, Ye BH & Müschen M. BCL6 is critical for the development of a diverse primary B cell repertoire. J Exp Med, 207: 1209-1221 (2011)
http://jem.rupress.org/content/207/6/1209.full.pdf+html

Qualifications:

Genuine enthusiasm for science, willingness to think beyond established concepts and to try and learn new experimental and analysis tools. The lab takes a team science approach, so being a nice person and enjoyable to work with is important as well.