Dr. Andrew Young joined the Department of Medicine in the Division of Hematology as an Instructor in July of 2024. He first discovered his interest and excitement for genomics through a summer internship at the National Human Genome Research Institute. Working with Dr. Elliott Margulies, he learned about genome sequencing technology, bioinformatics and genome assembly. After three years at the NIH, Andrew returned in 2010 to Washington University to pursue MD/PhD training. He joined the laboratory of Dr. Todd Druley, where we developed sequencing-based tools for detecting residual leukemia based on the unique malignancy-associated somatic mutations in the leukemic cells. They discovered that clonal hematopoiesis—ostensibly healthy hematopoietic cells harboring leukemia-associated mutations in disease-free individuals—is a ubiquitous phenomenon by middle age.
They also redefined their understanding of TP53-mutated therapy-related AML by showing that pre-leukemic TP53 mutations precede and are selected for by cytotoxic exposure, which upended the existing dogma that cytotoxic exposure introduces oncogenic TP53 mutations directly. These experiences solidified his interest in internal medicine and hematology/oncology. Andrew continued with internal medicine residency training in the Physician-Scientist Training Program (PSTP) at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University and started hematology/oncology fellowship training in 2020. Now as an Instructor in the Division of Hematology, his key interests include wanting to understand how clonal hematopoiesis is spatially organized in the bone marrow, whether bone marrow biopsy adequately represents hematological disease state across the entire body, whether hematopoietic clones are well mixed in the bone marrow, and what drives the malignant transformation of clonal hematopoiesis into hematologic malignancy.