Challen honored by Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

Grant Challen, PhD, a professor of oncology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has been recognized by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) for helping to advance the society’s work to cure blood cancers and improve the quality of life of patients and their families.

He and four other scientists were honored Dec. 10 at an LLS event held during the American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual meeting in San Diego.

Challen, who also is a Siteman Cancer Center research member, received an LLS Career Development Program (CDP) Scholar Achievement Award, which will provide funding for two to five years. The award honors scientists at different points in their careers who have made significant contributions and are seen as visionaries on a path to drive breakthroughs in blood cancer treatment and care.

“LLS’s strategic approach recognizes that biomedical research is a long game that requires ongoing support for research and researchers at all stages,” said LLS Chief Medical Officer Gwen Nichols, MD.

“LLS is funding unique work with each of this year’s CDP Achievement award winners that will improve our understanding of how blood cancers develop, how we can improve treatment, and even our ability to predict who will respond to which types of precision medicine treatment,” she said.

Challen and his lab are working to determine how disruption of the chemical compounds that direct our genome leads to the development of blood cancers. He was the first to describe how mutations in the DNMT3A gene regulate the balance of self-renewal and differentiation of blood stem cells as a first step to the development of AML.