Dominique Bonnet PhD

Dr Dominique Bonnet, working at the Francis Crick Institute in London, is part of a large project to tackle acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) – a type of blood cancer. By bringing together experts in a range of fields, they hope to gain a better understanding of the disease. Dr Bonnet is leading the part of the project to understand exactly how AML develops in the bone marrow, the part of the body that produces blood cells. In people with AML, the bone marrow creates lots of white blood cells, a particular type of cell which fights infections. But many of these are faulty. This means people with AML are more likely to get potentially harmful infections, as they don’t have enough healthy white blood cells to fight them. Dr Bonnet is working to understand why the bone marrow starts producing so many faulty cells. She hopes to discover ways to stop it and restore normal levels of white blood cells.