ASCI / Young Physician-Scientist Awards, 2020
The Young Physician-Scientist Awards (YPSA) recognize physician-scientists who are early in their first faculty appointment and have made notable achievements in their research.
About the awardee
David H. Spencer, MD, PhD, is a molecular pathologist and an expert in cancer genomics and epigenetics who has made significant contributions to our understanding of genomics and epigenetics of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). His accomplishments include a study of the epigenetic effects of the drug decitabine in primary AML samples that provided one of the first genome-wide views of the DNA methylation changes directly caused by this drug. He also co-led a study of tumor subclones in AML patients, which demonstrated that genetically-defined AML clones can have distinct functional properties both in vivo and in vitro. Dr. Spencer’s contributions also include a comprehensive epigenetic analysis of the HOX gene clusters in AML samples and normal hematopoietic cells, which demonstrated that the most common HOX expression pattern in AML involved a canonical set of genes in the HOXA and HOXB gene clusters and is shared with normal hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells. This study also identified distinct regions within these HOX clusters that are likely targets of regulatory activity in AML cells. In addition, Dr. Spencer led a genome-wide analysis DNA methylation patterns associated with the DNA methyltransferase DNMT3A in AML samples. This study showed that the AML-initiating DNMT3AR882 mutation results in hypothmethylation in preleukemic cells, and is therefore an initiating phenotype in AML. His analysis also demonstrated that CpG island hypermethylation in AML is mediated by DNMT3A, and likely occurs as a consequence of leukemic transformation. Dr. Spencer has been an ASH Scholar Award recipient and is a Doris Duke Clinical Scientist Development Award Scholar.