Understanding the mechanisms of blood cancer development: Large-scale genetic study of clonal hematopoiesis in human genomes

Clonal hematopoiesis (CH) is a pre-leukemic condition defined by somatic genetic alterations associated with blood cancer in healthy individuals. CH increases the risk of blood cancer by 10-fold. Recently, we distinguished myeloid and lymphoid CH which are selectively associated with risk of lineage-specific blood cancers.
This project aims to leverage large-scale sequencing datasets to elucidate the mechanisms of how myeloid and lymphoid CH develop, and why only a minority of CH carriers develop blood cancer. Specifically, we aim to identify novel genetic variants that give rise to CH and identify endogenous and exogeneous regulators of CH and leukemia development.