Terrence Wong

Terrence Wong is a Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine and Cancer Biology. The long-term goal of his research is to understand how altered hematopoiesis resulting from somatic mutations and/or epigenetic dysregulation impacts both malignant and non-malignant disease. During his PhD training at The University of Chicago, he worked with Dr. Tao Pan to investigate how the transcriptional process impacts in vivo RNA folding. After graduate school, he completed his residency in internal medicine and fellowship in hematology/oncology at Washington University in St. Louis. He performed my post-doctoral research with Dr. Daniel Link, studying how aging-associated somatic mutations impact the behavior of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) under cellular stress. One of their seminal findings was that HSCs harboring aging-associated TP53 mutations gain a competitive fitness advantage under the selective pressure of cytotoxic therapy, allowing them to clonally expand and potentially progress to therapy-related AML/MDS. Since starting his own independent research program at the University of Michigan, he has continued to investigate how somatic mutations impact hematopoiesis and how mutant hematopoietic populations impact human health. Clinically, he primarily treats patients with hematologic malignancies on the inpatient leukemia and bone marrow transplant wards.