Our Research

Welcome to the Hadland lab. Our lab’s focus is in understanding the origin of blood and immune cells during development.  We are particularly interested in determining the mechanisms by which hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) arise and how they acquire their unique properties, such as the capacity for life-long self-renewal and multilineage hematopoietic reconstitution following transplantation. We are also interested in understanding the developmental origins of pediatric leukemias and how the pathways that regulate HSC development are co-opted by leukemic stem cells, contributing to disease resistance and relapse. Our long-term objective is to apply knowledge of embryonic HSC development toward de novo HSC engineering in vitro, for the purposes of disease modelling, drug discovery, gene editing, and cellular therapies in blood and immune disorders.