Dr. Maxson is an Associate Professor in the Knight Cancer Institute, where she investigates the cellular and molecular changes that cause myeloid leukemias. She pursued her undergraduate studies at Scripps College and then completed her Ph.D. in Cell Biology, studying protein trafficking and processing. As a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratories of Drs. Jeff Tyner and Brian Druker, she integrated genomic and functional screening data to identify novel therapeutic targets in leukemia. Notably, Dr. Maxson identified therapeutically targetable mutations in CSF3R in the vast majority of patients with Chronic Neutrophilic Leukemia. The Maxson laboratory works to understand how genomic changes manifest at the cellular level to promote cancer formation and progression. Her team is particularly interested in using low-input profiling methods to understand the role of epigenetic changes in leukemia evolution and in understanding how different gene mutations combine to produce distinct malignancies.