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Despite advances in pediatric AML treatment, some leukemia cells can temporarily shut down and hide from therapy, later reawakening to cause relapse, the leading reason many cancers return after remission. Dr. Wang and colleagues seek to understand what allows these dormant leukemia cells to evade treatment and how they may eliminate them. Using gene-editing technology, Dr. Wang and team will work with a protein called DDX6, which acts as a key switch that keeps certain genes turned off in active leukemia cells. When DDX6 is lost, cancer cells enter a dormant, treatment-resistant state. This is a promising way to target these dormant cancer cells by blocking a signaling pathway called MEK which makes cells sensitive to chemotherapy. By uncovering how leukemia cells use dormancy to escape therapy and identify a way to target them, Dr. Wang and team's work will lay the foundation for new treatments to prevent relapse and improve long-term survival for pediatric AML patients.