OMAHA, Neb. (Dec. 23, 2013) — R. Kate Hyde, PhD, joins the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s research staff, specializing in leukemia research.

Hyde was featured in the Dec. 23, 2013 issue of UNMC Today, excerpted below:

Now, she works with mouse models with a subtype of acute myeloid leukemia. The difference is that now they can study the disease from its first mutation.

Kate Hyde, PhD (Photo: UNMC)

“When you see a patient in clinic, it’s only after full blown leukemia,” Dr. Hyde said. “You don’t know what the initial stages are. But with the mouse model, we can control when they start expressing the protein that we know is the first step. We look at the consequences of this one protein by itself without the complications of the other mutations found in patient samples.”

Understanding how this first happens is integral to drug design and drug testing, Dr. Hyde said. This is what she works on.

Read the entire article here.