Congratulations to Casey Wong for winning a Canadian Cancer Society PhD Fellowship Award totaling $235,000 over the next five years to support her in the MD/PhD program. Casey’s research in Dr. Michael Rauh’s lab, explores how mutations in blood stem cells – in a process called clonal hematopoiesis - influences therapy responses in people with cancer. Up to a third of people with cancer have clonal hematopoiesis and growing evidence suggests that it can influence their response to therapies as well as increase their risk of other diseases.
With funding from the Canadian Cancer Society, Casey is using blood samples donated by people with cancer undergoing treatment with immunotherapy and using genetic sequencing to analyze whether they have clonal hematopoiesis. The research team will also look at whether people with cancer and clonal hematopoiesis have differences in their immune cells, which may influence their response to therapy. If successful, this project would lead to understanding how clonal hematopoiesis influences the immune system in people with cancer and their responses to therapy.
This new knowledge could enable doctors to customize cancer treatments in the future to improve outcomes in people with cancer.