Grant Challen, PhD

Grant Challen, PhD

Associate Professor, Division of Oncology, Department of Medicine

Challen Lab website »

Core Usage & WUSTL affiliations:

  • Genome Technology Access Center (GTAC)
  • Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences
  • Siteman Cancer Center

Selected Awards:

  • V Foundation Scholar
  • Edward J. Mallinckrodt, Jr Foundation Scholar
  • NIH K99/R00 Pathways to Independence Award

Epigenetic Control of Normal and Malignant Hematopoiesis

Research in the Challen lab is focused on how chemical (epigenetic) marks on DNA direct the choices of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). HSCs reside in the bone marrow and are defined by their capacity to maintain the blood and bone marrow throughout the lifetime of an organism. However, the instructions that tell HSCs to create more HSCs or to generate specialized blood cell types are still relatively poorly understood. A number of transcription factors have been identified as critical for HSC maintenance and self-renewal but there is little insight into how these factors are orchestrated by epigenetic mechanisms to ensure blood homeostasis. Thus, the central theme of Dr. Challen’s research is understanding how epigenetic marks, such as histone methylation and acetylation, DNA methylation, and 5-hydroxymethylation coordinately act to regulate normal HSC function and how these processes go awry in blood diseases such as leukemia and lymphoma. In addition to using cell culture models, the Challen lab also uses various mouse genetic models to study the roles of genetic mutations of different components of the epigenetic machinery in cancers of the blood and bone marrow.


Recent Publications & News

Grant Challen, PhD

CRM celebrates faculty accomplishments

On January 9th, the Center of Regenerative Medicine celebrated the successes of some of our faculty members. Promotion to associate professor with tenure (Grant Challen, Medicine; Spencer Lake, Mechanical Engineering; Andrew Yoo, Developmental Biology), promotion to full professor (Indira Mysorekar, Ob/Gyn), fellowship in the AAAS (Lila Solnica-Krezel, Developmental Biology and Deborah Rubin, Medicine), and installation […]

New paper from the Challen Lab (Links to an external site)

Celik, H., Koh, W.K., Kramer, A.C., (…), Oh, S.T., Challen, G.A. JARID2 Functions as a Tumor Suppressor in Myeloid Neoplasms by Repressing Self-Renewal in Hematopoietic Progenitor Cells. Cancer Cell 34:741-756.e8, 2018.