Dr. Challen is currently an Associate Professor in the Division of Oncology at Washington University School of Medicine (St. Louis). His laboratory research is at the interface of stem cell biology and blood cancer, and aims to determine how disruption of the epignenome changes the fate of HSCs and ultimately leads to the development of hematopoietic disorders. He was the first to describe how mutations in the gene DNMT3A regulates the balance of HSC self-renewal and differentiation as a first step to development of AML. His lab aims to develop mutation-specific therapies to inhibit CH clones as a mechanism of blood cancer prevention.

Dr. Challen is investigating how mutations in genes that alter the epigenome alter the function of blood-forming hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), leading to a condition known as clonal hematopoiesis (CH) and predispose for future development of blood diseases such as myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), acute myeloid leukemia (AML)and T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL).