Email

nakada@bcm.edu

Positions

Associate Professor

Molecular and Human Genetics
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston, TX, US

Member

Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston, Texas, United States

Addresses

One Baylor Plaza (Lab)

R713
Houston, TX 77030
United States

Professional Interests

• Normal and malignant stem cells in the blood system

Websites

Selected Publications

• Richard H. Chapple, Yu-Jung Tseng, Tianyuan Hu, Ayumi Kitano, Makiko Takeichi, Kevin A. Hoegenauer and Daisuke Nakada "Lineage tracing of murine adult hematopoietic stem cells reveals active contribution to steady-state hematopoiesis." Blood Advances. 2018 2 : 1220-1228.
• Shi X, Kitano A, Jiang Y, Luu V, Hoegenauer KA, Nakada D. "Clonal expansion and myeloid leukemia progression modeled by multiplex gene editing of murine hematopoietic progenitor cells.." Exp Hematol.. 2018 May ; : Pubmed PMID: 29751067
• Chapple RH, Hu T, Tseng YJ, Liu L, Kitano A, Luu V, Hoegenauer KA, Iwawaki T, Li Q, Nakada D. "ERα promotes murine hematopoietic regeneration through the Ire1α-mediated unfolded protein response.." eLife. 2018 February 16; : Pubmed PMID: 29451493
• Gundry MC, Brunetti L, Lin A, Mayle AE, Kitano A, Wagner D, Hsu JI, Hoegenauer KA, Rooney CM, Goodell MA, Nakada D. "Highly Efficient Genome Editing of Murine and Human Hematopoietic Progenitor Cells by CRISPR/Cas9.." Cell Reports. 2016 October 25; : Pubmed PMID: 27783956

Projects

Regulation of hematopoietic stem cells by systemic factors and the microenvironment

HSCs divide rarely (a feature called quiescence) but become activated and divide frequently upon stress, such as infection or injury, in order to facilitate immune responses or to promote hematopoietic regeneration. We discovered that a female sex hormone estrogen stimulates HSC division, and that estrogen promotes HSC division and red blood cell production during pregnancy (Nakada et al., Nature. 2014). More recently, we discovered that estrogen activates the unfolded protein response (UPR) in HSCs, endowing them with increased capacity to cope with stress and to promote regeneration (Chapple et al., eLife. 2018). We are using a combination of approaches, including transplantation, epigenome profiling, and CRISPR-mediated gene editing, to understand how estrogen stimulates HSCs.

Metabolism in leukemia stem cells

Cancer cells often exhibit aberrant metabolic regulation, such as high dependence on glucose or glutamine metabolism. We are interested in identifying metabolic regulations that are important in leukemia cells but are less important in HSCs and normal hematopoietic cells. We identified a metabolic master regulator for cancer cells that is dispensable for normal HSCs, called AMPK (Saito et al., Cell Stem Cell. 2015). AMPK was particularly important for the immature leukemia cells called leukemia stem cells, and inhibiting this pathway rendered leukemia stem cells unfit to reside in the hypoxic bone marrow environment leading to their demise. Our ongoing work has revealed that AMPK has pervasive effects on leukemia stem cells beyond metabolism, such as gene regulation.

Development of new genetic models of hematological malignancies using the CRISPR/Cas9 system

Recent advances in genome editing tools, in particular the CRISPR/Cas9 system, has transformed the way in which genetic studies are performed in multiple model systems. However, until recently, performing genome editing in primary HSCs remained challenging. We recently developed a method to directly modify the genomes of both mouse and human HSCs using the CRISPR/Cas9 system (Gundry et al., Cell Reports. 2016). With this method, we were able to delete genes in more than 75% of HSCs to evaluate gene function in primary HSCs. Moreover, we further optimized the method to perform multiplexed genome editing of mouse HSCs and demonstrated that this method can be used to generate novel mouse models of acute myeloid leukemias by combinatorially deleting up to five genes recurrently mutated in human leukemias (Shi et al. In press). We are using this method to create new leukemia models to better understand how mutations cooperate to transform hematopoietic progenitor cells.

Funding

Metabolic Regulation in Leukemia-Initiating Cells - #1 R01 CA193235

(04/01/2015 - 03/31/2020) Grant funding from NIH

Mesenchymal stromal cells regulate hematopoietic stem cell aging - #R01DK107413

(01/01/2016 - 12/31/2019) NIH

Scholar

Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT)

RP160035

Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas