Lindsey Montefiori

I am a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Charles Mullighan’s laboratory at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. My research interests lie in understanding how changes in our DNA disrupt normal blood cell development to cause leukemia. I started my research career as a postbaccalaureate fellow at the NIH where I studied how B cells tightly control DNA damage and repair to generate diverse antibodies. I attended the University of Chicago for my PhD where I used next generation sequencing technology to study how DNA elements called enhancers control the activity of developmentally-regulated genes, which are often mutated in cancer. In my postdoctoral research at St. Jude, I am studying a rare, high-risk form leukemia that has features of both myeloid (e.g. AML) and lymphoid (e.g. ALL) disease. My research uses human blood cells, patient samples, and mouse models to investigate how specific DNA alterations lead to this form of leukemia and identify new tailored therapeutic approaches.