The next frontier for innovation, research, clinical trials, and state-of-the art treatment.

Our history of research and innovation has resulted in many of the diagnostic and therapeutic techniques currently used around the world to treat cancer and blood disorders. Today, we continue to stand among the world’s leaders in many innovative approaches.

Research

at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center

Agarwal Lab

Certain genetic disorders cause widespread disease in the body, but the principle reason for illness and death in early childhood is failure of the blood system. We would like to…

Armstrong Lab

The Armstrong Lab at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute studies how developmental gene expression programs are regulated during normal and cancer development. We are interested in determining how chromatin-based mechanisms control…

Bahl Lab

We are leveraging cutting-edge protein engineering methods to create genetically-encodable macromolecules with novel function. The combination of computational design and directed evolution is unlocking new proteins with capabilities never before…

Bandopadhayay Lab

The Bandopadhayay Lab at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute focuses on: Identifying genomic and epigenetic drivers of pediatric brain tumors, characterizing resistance mechanisms of pediatric brain tumors, and developing more effective treatments…

Bauer Lab

The laboratory studies the genetic determinants of blood cell ontogeny and disease. The blood system recapitulates fundamental biologic activities, such as renewal/differentiation, regeneration/homeostasis, and development/aging. We use molecular genetic, biochemical,…

Bona Lab

The Bona Lab at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute studies outcome disparities in childhood cancer with a focus on improving childhood cancer outcomes by systematically considering social determinants of health as risk…

Camargo Lab

The Camargo laboratory focuses on the study of adult stem cell biology, organ size regulation, and cancer. Despite fantastic progress in developmental biology research over the past decade, one aspect…

Cantor Lab

The broad interests of the Cantor Laboratory are to elucidate the gene regulatory mechanisms involved in normal blood cell development and to understand how their dysregulation leads to certain human…

Center for Platelet Research Studies

The Center for Platelet Research Studies is an internationally recognized multidisciplinary center for the study of platelet function by state-of-the-art methods. The Center undertakes basic, translational, and clinical research, including…

Crompton Lab

The Crompton Lab’s research focuses on utilizing genomic and proteomic technologies to identify and validate new therapeutic targets for pediatric solid tumors. In addition, we are working on developing non-invasive…

D’Andrea Laboratory

Our laboratory examines the molecular signaling pathways which regulate the DNA damage response in mammalian cells. Disruption of these pathways, by germline or somatic mutation, leads to genomic instability, cellular…

Daley Lab

Our laboratory seeks a better understanding of the biology, pathology, and clinical utility of hematopoietic and pluripotent stem cells and of the role of various tissue stem cells in development…

Filbin Lab

The Filbin Lab at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute studies pediatric brain tumors, particularly the lethal high-grade gliomas including DIPG and malignant embryonal brain tumors that are in greatest need of…

Genovese Lab

We are a team of young and eclectic scientists interested in exploiting gene-engineering tools to study biological functions and solve problems with a direct impact on human health. We exploit…

George Lab

The George laboratory seeks to identify molecular targets that can be translated into novel therapies in the pediatric solid tumor neuroblastoma, and unravel the genetic perturbations that occur during development…

Goessling & North Labs

Using the zebrafish model for chemical fishing expeditions, we examine conserved regulators of stem cell specification and growth, ultimately striving towards clinical therapies to alleviate human hematopoietic and hepatic disease.

Gregory Laboratory

Our research is focused on identifying and characterizing new mechanisms of RNA regulation in the dynamic control of gene expression. We apply this knowledge to explore how RNA regulatory pathways…

Gutierrez Lab

Our laboratory’s primary interest lies in unraveling the molecular pathogenesis of human cancer, with a focus on discovery of novel therapeutic targets in chemoresistant human cancers. Our approach combines analysis…

Kadoch Lab

Our laboratory is centered in understanding the structure and function of large, macromolecular machines called ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling complexes, with an emphasis in dissecting their roles in human disease and…

Kean Lab

Dr. Kean’s laboratory is working to solve the mystery of immune recognition and immune tolerance. Immune recognition is the process by which the immune system differentiates between healthy cells and…

Kharchenko Lab

We are a computational biology group at the Department of Biomedical Informatics of the Harvard Medical School. We are focused on analysis of intratumoral heterogeneity in different cancer types, as…

Kim Lab

The broad interest of the Kim Lab is to characterize the biology of stem cells in normal lung and lung cancer. Numerous lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis or chronic…

Kirchhausen Lab

Our research has helped defined the structure, interactions, and assembly-disassembly mechanisms of clathrin and many of its associated proteins, through studies extending over three decades. Our work has been characterized…

Knoechel Lab

Our research efforts focus on identifying epigenetic dependencies in pediatric tumors with a particular focus on high risk pediatric leukemias and sarcomas. Defects in chromatin and aberrant epigenetic regulation and…

A. Thomas Look Lab

Our laboratory seeks to elucidate the molecular pathogenesis of human leukemias and solid tumors using both a cell culture model and a zebrafish animal model.

Orkin Lab

The Orkin laboratory focuses on stem cell biology, particularly the development and function of the blood system, the relationship between cancer and stem cells, and the mechanisms responsible for self-renewal…

Pellman Lab

Our laboratory uses a combination of genetics, biochemistry and live-cell imaging to study cell division and the maintenance of genome stability. Projects are aimed at defining the molecular mechanisms underlying…

Pikman lab

Leukemia is the most common pediatric cancer and remains the second leading cause of pediatric cancer related death. Our goal is to use genomics and metabolomics to understand pediatric leukemia…

Rowe Laboratory

We are interested in unlocking new paradigms of normal blood development with the long-term aim of building better models of childhood blood diseases. The process of blood formation changes over…

Sankaran Laboratory

The Sankaran laboratory uses human genetic studies to gain insight into normal hematopoiesis and how this process is perturbed in disease. Our studies are relevant to numerous blood diseases, including…

Segal Lab

Our research focuses on intercellular communication: how growth factor signaling pathways regulate brain development, and how these pathways contribute to abnormal proliferation, migration and survival in brain tumors and in…

Shimamura Lab

The Shimamura lab studies bone marrow failure, myelodysplastic syndromes, and genetic cancer predisposition.

Springer Lab

We study receptor-ligand interactions and transmembrane signal transmission that are relevant to immunology, hemostasis, and human disease using structural, cell biological, and single molecule techniques. A unifying theme is how…

Stegmaier Lab

Our research program focuses on the integration of "omic" approaches for the identification of new protein targets and small-molecule modulators of malignancy with an eye toward clinical translation.

Wagner Lab

Our Mission is to promote basic and applied discovery in the fields of vascular biology, inflammation, and thrombosis. For many years, our laboratory’s research has focused on adhesion molecules, the…

Walensky Laboratory

The Walensky laboratory focuses on the chemical biology of deregulated apoptotic and transcriptional pathways in cancer. In particular, the lab’s studies emphasize the chemical, structural, and cell biology of the…

Weinstock Laboratory

The Weinstock Laboratory uses a range of approaches at the intersection of genetics, DNA repair, and mouse modeling to address the ontogeny, pathogenesis, and therapeutic targeting of lymphoid neoplasms.

Williams Lab

The major interest of the Williams laboratory is the biology of hematopoietic stem cells. The work has focused on understanding the interaction of hematopoietic stem cells with the bone marrow…

Winau Lab

Immunologists in the Winau Lab are most excited about the discovery of basic mechanisms that explain how the immune system functions. Over the years, we added to the passion for…

Wolfe Lab

The Wolfe Lab is composed of six physician / interprofessional PI’s with varying expertise, backgrounds, and research interests. As a whole, our lab aims to improve wellbeing for seriously ill…

Wong Lab

Our group studies the physical basis behind how biological systems work at the nanoscale, with a focus on the role of mechanical force. To accomplish this, we develop and apply…

Zhang Lab

Over the last decade, the Zhang lab has made significant contributions to the epigenetic field by identifying and characterizing many chromatin modifying enzymes that include: 1) the nucleosome remodeling and…

Zon Lab

Our mission is to discover the principles governing blood cell production and melanoma to guide the development of therapies for blood disorders & cancer. Our lab utilizes the zebrafish model…

Agarwal Lab

Certain genetic disorders cause widespread disease in the body, but the principle reason for illness and death in early childhood is failure of the blood system. We would like to…
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Armstrong Lab

Bahl Lab

Bandopadhayay Lab

Bauer Lab

Bona Lab

Camargo Lab

Cantor Lab

Center for Platelet Research Studies

Crompton Lab

D’Andrea Laboratory

Daley Lab

Our laboratory seeks a better understanding of the biology, pathology, and clinical utility of hematopoietic and pluripotent stem cells and of the role of various tissue stem cells in development…
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Our Researchers in the News

Avoiding a lifetime of injections: Can gene editing cure severe congenital neutropenia?

Fionn Mulrooney, a cheerful 11-month-old, in Plymouth, Massachusetts, has no idea he has a life-threatening genetic disease. Nor does he seem fazed by the daily subcutaneous injections his parents have learned how to give him. And little does he know that cells from his bone marrow are helping scientists develop an innovative gene-editing approach that could someday correct his disease, known as severe congenital neutropenia or SCN.

Looking for cancer’s Achilles heel: The Pediatric Cancer Dependency Map

Thanks to developments in precision medicine, some adult cancers are now treated with designer drugs that target the genetic mutations that caused them. But most children with cancer have not reaped the same benefits. Unlike adult cancers, childhood cancers carry few genetic mutations. And the mutations these tumors do have are typically harder to make drugs against.

After decades of evolution, gene therapy arrives

As early as the 1960s, scientists speculated that DNA sequences could be introduced into patients’ cells to cure genetic disorders. In the early 1980s, David Williams, MD, and David Nathan, MD, at Boston Children’s Hospital published the first paper showing one could use a virus to insert genes into blood-forming stem cells. In 2003, the Human Genome Project wrapped up, giving us a complete blueprint of our DNA. In the past decade, gene therapy has become a reality for multiple diseases, especially those caused by mutations in a single gene.