Hong Wen

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Epigenetics at Van Andel Institute. My research is focused on epigenetic regulation of gene expression during blood cell formation and in the pathogenesis of blood cancer. I obtained PhD in Biochemistry from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2001 and joined Dr. Joseph Lipsick’s laboratory at Stanford University for my postdoctoral training, where I became interested in blood cancer research. In 2008, I joined MD Anderson Cancer Center as a research track Assistant Professor, where I made seminal discoveries of the ENL protein as a novel histone acetylation reader and an attractive new therapeutic target for acute leukemias. In 2018, I started my independent lab at Van Andel Institute studying epigenetic regulation of gene expression in blood cancers. The overarching goal of my research is to understand and target ENL in acute leukemias. My long-term research goal is to translate our discoveries at bench to help leukemia patients in the clinic.