Director, Bone Marrow Transplant Program
Co-Director, Hematologic Malignancies Program
Professor of Oncology and Medicine

Clinical/Academic Interests

Hematopoiesis, Blood and marrow transplantation, Hematologic malignancies

Research Interests

The overall goal of Dr. Jones' research is to better understand the biology of normal and abnormal hematopoiesis, with an eye to improving the treatment of blood disorders by translating promising findings to the clinic.  A primary area of focus is to identification and biologic characterization of cancer stem cells.  It appears that, for most cancers, only a small fraction of the cancer cells retains the capacity to self-renew and proliferate.  These characterize the disease.  In many tumors, cancer stem cells and their differentiated progeny appear to have markedly different biologic characteristics.  Characterizing cancer stem cells has particular relevance for targeted anti-cancer therapies.  Therapies that target mature tumor cells may lead to clinical improvement, but are unlikely to be curative unless cancer stem cells are also targeted.  Alternatively, relevant targets unique to the rare cancer stem cells may be missed of clinical activity is judged soley by criteria that reflect the effects of treatment on the bulk of the cancer.  Thus, understanding the biology of cancer stem cells, especially in relation to their differentiated progeny, is essential for developing effective anticancer treatments.  One cancer stem cell specific therapy that appears promising is differentiation therapy.  Although self-renewal and differentiation are effectively coupled in normal stem cells, all cancer stem cells show some degree of differentiation block.  Re-establishing the differentiation program in cancer stem cells should promote their maturation, leading to a loss of self-renewal capacity.

Selected Publications

Jones RJ, Gocke CD, Kasamon YL, Miller CB, Perkins B, Barber JP, Vala MS, Gerber JM, Gellert LL, Siedner M, Lemas ML, Brennan S, Ambinder RF, Matsui W. Circulating clonotypic B cells in classical Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Blood. 113:5920-5926, 2009.

Brodsky RA, Chen AR, Dorr D, Fuchs EJ, Huff CA, Luznik L, Smith BD, Matsui WH, Goodman SN, Ambinder RF, Jones RJ. High dose cyclophosphamide for severe aplastic anemia: long-term follow-up. Blood 115:2136-41, 2010.

Ghiaur G, Gerber J, Jones RJ. Cancer Stem cells and minimal residual Disease. Stem Cells. 30:89-93, 2012.

Gerber JM, Smith BD, Ngwang B, Zhang H, Vala MS,2 Morsberger L, Galkin S, Collector M, Perkins B, Levis MJ, Griffin CA, Sharkis SJ, Borowitz MJ, Karp JE, Jones RJ. A clinically relevant population of leukemic CD34+CD38- cells in acute myeloid leukemia. Blood In press, Jan 19. [Epub ahead of print] 2012.