Our research centers on multiple myeloma (MM), a blood cancer that grows predominantly within the bone marrow. Like many other bone-metastatic cancers, MM causes painful tissue destruction, disruption of hematopoiesis, bone fractures, hypercalcemia, and eventual death. The role cells within the bone marrow niche such as adipocyte and 5 osteoblast lineage cells, as well as others play in this disease as well as the alterations that affect bone marrow stroma during cancer are areas of focus.