Neville Dusaj, fifth year student in the Tri-Institutional MD-PhD Program, has been awarded an F 30 research grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
This award will support Mr. Dusaj's research in the Landau Lab at Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, in particular his project "Deciphering Clonal Hematopoiesis via Single-Cell Multi-Omics."
He gives more context for his research program and project: "Clonal hematopoiesis, a condition where stem cells of the blood acquire mutations and experience increased rates of division, is a relatively common phenomenon, with an incidence of over 10% in patients over the age of 65. Importantly, while patients with clonal hematopoiesis do not experience any symptoms as a result of these mutations, they are at significantly increased risk for developing blood cancers and cardiovascular disease. Using genetic analysis that permits identification of these mutations in single cells, and therefore resolving the admixture of wild type and mutant cells within a sample, this project aims to uncover the processes by which clonal hematopoiesis develops into more serious disease."