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Hans-Willem Snoeck, MD, PhD
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About Me
Language
Position
About Me
Language
Position
Education
MD, University of Antwerp
PhD, University of Antwerp
, Antwerp University Hospital
, Mount Sinai School of Medicine
Research
The best-characterized stem cells are hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) in the bone marrow, which are responsible for the lifelong production of blood cells HSC can give rise to at least eight lineages of mature cells and can self-renew. As they differentiate, HSC progressively lose their self-renewal capacity, and generate multipotential progenitor cells, which become increasingly lineage restricted and give rise in turn to mature cells. A tight balance between the self renewal of HSC and their differentiation to specific blood cell lineages is critical for the production of normal numbers of blood cells throughout our life span. Defining the signaling pathways and transcriptional machinery regulating these events is essential to understand the control of lineage commitment within the hematopoietic system and ultimately to enable the manipulation of these decisions in HSCs both in culture and in vivo.
One way to approach the study of the regulation of HSC is quantitative genetics. We and others have shown that the HSC compartment of the mouse is subject to extensive quantitative genetic variation among inbred mouse strains. Individual variation in the quality of bone marrow donors, and in the hematopoietic response to chemotherapeutic agents suggest that the same may be true in humans. These finding raises two questions: one, what are the regulatory pathways and underlying genes that cause genetic variation in the HSC compartment, and two, what are its organismal consequences. We have shown that signaling by transforming growth factor-beta2 (TGF-b2) in HSC plays a role in the quantitative genetic variation in HSC function and is determined by locus on quantitative trait locus on chr. 4. The signaling mechanism of TGF-b2 in HSC clearly differs from that of other TGF-b isoforms, as its biological effects in stem cells are different and even opposite. Furthermore, we are testing the hypothesis that genetic variation in the kinetics of HSC may affect aging of the hematopoietic system, in particular thymic involution, and perhaps organismal aging.
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Industry Relationships
Physicians and scientists on the faculty of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai often interact with pharmaceutical, device, biotechnology companies, and other outside entities to improve patient care, develop new therapies and achieve scientific breakthroughs. In order to promote an ethical and transparent environment for conducting research, providing clinical care and teaching, Mount Sinai requires that salaried faculty inform the School of their outside financial relationships.
Dr. Snoeck has not yet completed reporting of Industry relationships.
Mount Sinai's faculty policies relating to faculty collaboration with industry are posted on our website. Patients may wish to ask their physician about the activities they perform for companies.