ASCI / Young Physician-Scientist Awards, 2024
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
Lachelle D. Weeks, MD, PhD is an Instructor of Medicine and Investigator in the Division of Population Sciences within the Department of Medical Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. She received her MD and PhD degrees from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine where her research focused on elucidating cellular dependencies on DNA repair pathways for lung cancer cells treated with the antifolate, pemetrexed. Dr. Weeks then completed Internal Medicine Residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital followed by Hematology-Oncology Fellowship at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. While completing her post-doctoral research training, she joined the faculty in 2021 as an Instructor and attending physician in the Center for Leukemia and Department of Medical Oncology at Dana-Farber. She serves as the director of the CHIP clinic within the Dana-Farber Centers for Early Detection and Interception, where she counsels patients with clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP) on their risk developing blood cancers such as myelodysplastic syndrome and acute myeloid leukemia (MDS/AML).
Dr. Weeks is a translational researcher with a transdisciplinary research program focused on developing a screening and prevention program for MDS/AML. Specifically, her laboratory’s work seeks to identify populations of patients who might be appropriate for screening for the MDS/AML precursor condition, CHIP; develop statistical models to estimate a patient’s risk of transformation from CHIP to MDS/AML; and test therapeutic interventions that prevent progression from CHIP to MDS/AML. Her work has led to the development of the clonal hematopoiesis risk score (CHRS), the first clinical tool for risk stratifying clonal hematopoiesis based on absolute risk of progression to myeloid malignancy. Dr. Weeks’ research on clonal hematopoiesis has been supported by grants from American Society of Hematology Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program, Edward P. Evans Foundation for MDS, and Breakthrough Cancer.