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
Aaron D. Viny, MD, MS, is a hematologic oncologist and his career goal is to better understand the functional role of chromatin structure in transcriptional regulation of both normal and malignant hematopoiesis. This work is focused primarily through the lens of cohesin complex alterations but likely represents a convergent mechanism of transformation with other epigenetic drivers in cancer, particularly acute myeloid leukemia. He graduated in the inaugural class of the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine; a program designed to train physician-scientists. His graduate research was in the lab of Dr. Maciejewski and focused on bone marrow failure syndromes, including myelodysplastic syndrome. He played a central role in identifying a polymorphism in the NKG2D receptor agonist, MICA as a driver of clonal lymphoproliferation in LGL leukemia. Given his strengths in molecular genetics and hematopoiesis, it was a natural progression upon beginning his fellowship at MSKCC to join the laboratory of Dr. Levine whose prior work in myeloproliferative neoplasms and AML is well known. Under the mentorship of Dr. Levine, he was well-positioned to characterize the mechanisms and determine the clinical significance of cohesin mutations in myeloid disease. Together, they generated novel cohesin mouse models and intersected phenotypic, transcriptional, and chromatin conformation datasets to identify the functional effects of cohesin loop abnormalities in hematopoiesis. His aim is to develop a research program that interrogates the effects of epigenetic disease alleles on 3-dimensional DNA structure in normal and malignant tissue. These structural aberrations will be leveraged for epigenetic reprogramming and synthetic lethal modifications. In addition to his academic history, he is a survivor of acute lymphoblastic leukemia after an allogeneic bone marrow transplant at age 21. The passion and dedication that he brings to the bench, influenced by the time he spent at bedside, gives him a unique perspective that will undoubtedly increase the likelihood of his success.