Xunlei Kang
University of Missouri-Columbia, MO·Medicine & Clinical Research
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is an aggressive blood cancer. It accounts for more than 40% of US leukemia deaths, and treatment has improved little in two decades.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biology
Pharmacology
- Topics
acute myeloid leukemia
leukemic stem cells
bone marrow niche
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Mar 2031
What they work on
- Determine how DPP4, a cell-surface enzyme, controls the location, survival and self-renewal of human AML stem cells, using colony-forming assays and mice carrying human AML cells.
- Test DPP4 inhibitors alone and with standard chemotherapy in AML xenograft mice, and use migration, engraftment and imaging assays to find the signals DPP4 regulates for marrow homing.
- Test whether the DPP4–Src interaction is essential for AML stem cell survival, and whether combining DPP4 and Src inhibitors kills these cells more effectively.
- Determine how glypican-3 (GPC3) on N-cadherin+ marrow support cells shapes leukemic stem cell behavior, using inducible Gpc3 knockout mice and AML patient marrow biopsies.
- Test whether support cells are the main CXCL12 source for human leukemic stem cells using single-cell RNA sequencing and imaging, and block CXCL12 signaling with AMD3100.
- Evaluate niche-directed treatments with chemotherapy in Cxcl12-deficient AML mice and in mice carrying chemotherapy-resistant or relapsed patient AML cells.
More about the research
A key reason is relapse. A small number of leukemic stem cells, which can regrow the cancer, survive chemotherapy by sheltering in protected spots in the bone marrow known as the niche. Two projects ask how these cells use the marrow environment to survive, and whether that relationship can be targeted with drugs.
Why it matters
AML kills about ten thousand people in the US each year, mostly within a few years of diagnosis, and relapse is a major cause. Targeting DPP4, possibly with existing diabetes drugs, or disrupting the bone marrow niche that shelters residual leukemic stem cells could make chemotherapy more effective. This approach may reduce relapse and improve survival for AML patients.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Ravindra Majeti
Stanford University, CA·Genetics
Determine how long the pre-leukemic phase lasts in people who progress to acute myeloid leukemia, and whether that duration affects how the disease develops.
Corynn Kasap
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Use computational protein engineering to build a CAR-T cell based on the natural ligand of CD70, a protein found on AML cells but largely absent from normal tissue, and test whether it clears CD70-low leukemia blasts.
Wei Du
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Examine how TREM1, a stress-induced immune receptor, acts within leukemia-associated macrophages during leukemia development, using inducible macrophage-specific Trem1 knockout mice in Fanca-deficient and MLL-AF9 leukemia models.
The school
University of Missouri-Columbia: 21 labs on PI Pages, $509M a year on research, 260 research doctorates a year.
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