I began my career at The Ohio State University, where I studied blood vessel development and received my PhD in the lab of Dr. Brenda Lilly. After graduating, I was interested in moving into the cancer field, so I joined the lab of Dr. Jill de Jong at University of Chicago, working on T-cell leukemia in the zebrafish model. There I adapted a method for identifying leukemia stem cells within a tumor, the cells responsible for relapse and resistance after initial treatment. I then moved to the neighboring lab of Dr. Megan McNerney to comprehensively test genes within a frequently deleted portion of the genome that correlates with multiple blood disorders and leukemias. Next, I followed my wife’s fellowship appointment to Washington University in St. Louis and joined the lab of Dr. Daniel Link. Now in my second year here, I am continuing my work in the leukemia field, focusing on TP53, the most commonly mutated gene in all cancers. Mutations in TP53 mark the worst forms of leukemia, resistant to most chemotherapies, and finding an effective treatment is the focus of this proposal.