Tell us a little bit about yourself!
I’m Dr. Satish Nandakumar; I am an assistant professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. I was awarded the Judith Graham Pool Postdoctoral Research Fellowship when I was working as a postdoctoral fellow in 2017. Before that, I completed my graduate work at St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
How did you hear about the JGP Fellowship?
My mentor told me about the fellowship and the opportunities it could provide my work.
What did your research focus on?
My study was titled “Development of Hematopoietic CRISPR/Cas9 Gene Activation for Hemophilia Therapy.” It aimed to develop a novel gene therapy approach for hemophilia that involves activation of the endogenous factor VIII or IX genes within hematopoietic stem cells by taking advantage of the CRISPR/Cas9 gene activation system. This work has the potential to benefit patients with mild hemophilia mutations.
How did the JGP Fellowship support your research at the time? Does it continue to influence your work now?
The fellowship support helped me apply CRISPR activation approaches for the first time in primary hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells. In my independent position I am studying genetic variants that predispose to hematological malignancies and I plan to utilize the CRISPR activation approaches in my future studies to examine these genetic variants.
The Judith Graham Pool Postdoctoral Research Fellowship has been supporting basic science and pre-clinical research to expand our understanding of bleeding disorders since 1972. Learn more here.
