Grigore-Aristide Gafencu

With the advent of single cell transcriptomics, new insights and challenges have been revealed in studying the heterogeneity of haematopoietic stem and progenitor populations (HSPCs) as well as immune cell types. My interests lie in using single cell transcriptomic datasets to investigate haematopoietic stem cell compartment heterogeneity in search of populations with high self-renewal capabilities as well as to understand how aging is affecting the heterogeneity of HSCPs and immune cell types, in particular T cells.

I earned a MD (UK NARIC comparable UK qualification: BMBS) from Iuliu Hațieganu Univerisity of Medicine and Pharmacy in Cluj-Napoca, Romania and trained with Assit. Prof. Ciprian Tomuleasa at the Department of Haematology of the Faculty of Medicine of my alma mater. During my stay in his lab I’ve had the opportunity to intern in the lab of Prof. Olivier Gires (LMU Klinikum) as an Amgen Scholar working on circulating tumour cells and in the lab of Assit. Prof. Gabriel Ghiaur (Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine) as a visiting student working on the influence of liposomal retinoids on AML differentiation patterns. While in the Tomuleasa lab, I helped develop tools to screen for antifibrotic compounds with potential use in myelofibrosis, perform in vitro testing of tyrosine kinase inhibitor(TKI)-loaded gold nanoparticles as alternative formulations for TKIs in AML treatment and work on a project investigating PARP inhibitors effects on AML blast differentiation and DNA damage response.

I am reading for a DPhil in Medical Sciences at the MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine with the supervision of Profs. Paresh Vyas & Claus Nerlov.

I hold a WIMM Prize PhD Studentships and am grateful to the MRC Molecular Haemtology Unit at the MRC WIMM for this support.