Akil Merchant, MD, is an NIH funded physician-scientist who focuses on developing new treatments for blood cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma. In particular, he studies how interactions between tumor cells, cancer stem cells and the tumor immune microenvironment can drive the progression of tumors and resistance to chemotherapies. The work in the lab is organized in two major themes: 1) Hedgehog signaling in normal and malignant hematopoiesis. Currently we have two projects in the lab focused on Hedgehog signaling. The first is focused on understanding how loss of Gli2 and Gli3 disrupts stem cell function in normal hematopoietic stem cells.