Research seminars Dietary control of normal and malignant hematopoiesis

Diet and nutrition are essential components of life that impacts tissue function, animal physiology, and behavior. Excess nutrition is a driver of multiple metabolic disorders and facilitates tumorigenesis, while limiting nutrition availability extends lifespan of many organisms. At the cellular level, many cells in each tissue respond to changes in nutrition availability, which are mediated through evolutionary conserved pathways such as those composed of TOR, AMPK, and sirtuins. At the interphase of the positive and negative effects of dietary impact on animal physiology are tissue stem cells. Tissue stem cells such as hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and intestinal stem cells (ISCs) respond to excess or limited nutrition and change their self-renewal and differentiation decision, which impacts animal physiology and propensity for tumorigenesis. Some metabolic requirements of tissue stem cells change upon transformation into cancer cells, exposing metabolic vulnerabilities of immature cancer cells not present in normal stem cells. In this lecture, I will discuss our recent discoveries on how HSCs are affected by nutritional status, and how dietary regimen can be used to suppress hematologic malignancies.