The primary goal of Dr. Ferrell's research is to improve our understanding of hematologic malignancies in general, and acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) in particular, by using single cell approaches for therapeutic discovery. A focus of his research has been to use clinical samples collected at different time points during therapy to understand contributors to disease relapse and therapy resistance. He uses a multimodal approach to understand how single-cell and bulk leukemia signaling, epigenetics and gene expression affect these outcomes. Other projects in the lab include investigation novel natural products in AML, dissection of innate immune signaling in MDS, and characterization of cellular changes in AML from diagnosis to relapse.