Medical Student Research Forum Posters

B-ALL is the most common cancer in children, but B-ALL primary leukemia cells are not known to grow well in vitro (1,2). In vitro cell culture is a valuable tool used to craft therapies and run other studies without using in vivo models. Currently, Dr. Satake’s lab has been working with B-ALL in xenograft models. Serum-free culture conditions, including those similar to hematopoietic progenitor cell media, have been used to proliferate ALL blasts previously (with FLT3, SCF, and IL3 growth factors) (3). Unfortunately, outside of co-culture with mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), there is a “lack of suitable in vitro culture conditions” to culture primary B-ALL cells (2). Therefore, we will attempt to use hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) media to attempt to culture primary B-ALL cells.