Christine Zhang, PhD
St. Louis, MO
United States
Washington University in St. Louis
Dr. Zhang is a postdoctoral fellow at Washington University in Saint Louis. She completed her PhD in epigenetics and neuroscience at the University of Queensland (Australia) to study the long-term impact of early life epigenetic disruptions on brain structure and function. She then briefly worked to discover molecular biomarkers of pediatric acute leukemia using a targeted sequencing platform, where she developed a strong interest in identifying the mechanism underlying leukemogenesis. Since 2019, Dr. Zhang has been undertaking her postdoctoral training with Dr. Grant Challen to investigate how mutations in an epigenetic modifier DNA Methyltransferase 3A (DNMT3A) convey a fitness advantage to hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) during chronic inflammatory signaling and how this process primes clonal hematopoiesis to malignant transformation. She is currently developing her independent project in understanding the role of p53 signaling in leukemogenesis of NPM1-mutant AML.