Lukasz Gondek
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Medicine & Clinical Research
As people age, blood stem cells pick up mutations, and some mutated cells multiply into large families of identical cells, called clones. This condition is clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP).
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Genetics
- Topics
clonal hematopoiesis
somatic mutations
aging
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2027
What they work on
- Determine the cancer-causing potential of donor-derived CHIP in transplant recipients, using a cohort of 1,857 donors over 40 and serial recipient samples to separate true driver mutations from background aging mutations.
- Test how donor CHIP affects non-cancer complications after allogeneic bone marrow transplantation, by linking donor mutation data with recipients' clinical outcomes.
- Identify the epigenetic changes, chemical marks that control which genes are active, and the cellular pathways that let CHIP clones outgrow normal blood stem cells.
- Assess how CHIP relates to the development and progression of early, undiagnosed solid tumors in nearly 10,000 women enrolled in the DETECT trial.
More about the research
It affects more than 12% of people across age groups and nearly half of those over 85. Many of these mutations hit genes that can drive cancer, yet fewer than 1% of carriers per year progress to myelodysplastic syndrome (a bone marrow failure disorder) or leukemia. CHIP is also linked to chronic inflammation, heart disease and worse outcomes in people with solid tumors. Because progression is slow and rare, it is hard to tell who is truly at risk.
Why it matters
Because CHIP is so common in older adults, knowing which carriers face real danger could guide care for many people. This work could produce clinically useful risk categories for people with CHIP and improve the selection of bone marrow donors. It may also guide the choice of cancer therapies in ways that lower the risk of treatment-related leukemias and heart damage.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Britta Will
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, NY·Biology
Map when chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA), a selective protein-recycling pathway, is active in precancerous CHIP blood stem cells and leukemic stem cells, using a CMA reporter mouse and lentiviral CMA biosensors in patient cells.
Waihay Wong
Northwestern University, IL·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Test whether the NLRP3 inflammasome, an immune-cell sensor that triggers inflammatory signaling, is required for Tet2-deficient blood cells to outcompete normal ones, using mouse models of clonal hematopoiesis, human cell xenografts and patient specimens.
Laura Calvi
University of Rochester, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether pre-leukemic mutant blood cells form clones and progress to myelodysplastic syndromes more readily in an aged marrow environment, by transplanting mouse models of clonal hematopoiesis into young versus aged recipient mice.
The school
Johns Hopkins University: 100 labs on PI Pages, $4.1B a year on research, 622 research doctorates a year.
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