Juliana Lewis, B.S., Northeastern University, Boston, MA
Ph.D. Student in Immunology
E-mail: juliana.lewis@tufts.edu

Chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) is a hematologic malignancy induced by the formation of the Philadelphia chromosome which encodes the BCR-ABL oncoprotein. Signals from this molecule induce aberrant integrin signaling and adhesion in hematopoietic stem cells (HSC). In particular levels of E- and P-selectin ligands increase and L selectin decreases. I am testing the hypothesis that these changes contribute to the engraftment of malignant CML stem cells following bone marrow transplantation and lead to disease progression.