Rui Lu, PhD’s, research project on myelodysplastic syndromes is one of four projects to receive a grant through The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research’s 2022 Endeavor Awards.

The Mark Foundation Endeavor Awards, meant to promote collaborative science, are granted to multi-disciplinary teams pursuing innovative, unique approaches to understand and treat cancer. According to The Mark Foundation, “These four Endeavor teams, which bring together investigators from top cancer research centers across two continents and eight US states, will focus on cutting-edge topics in cancer research including inflammation, the microbiome, metabolism, and the humoral immune system.”

Dr. Lu is an assistant professor of hematology/oncology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He and his colleague, Robert Welner, PhD, are leading their team’s research project Dissecting Drivers of Inflammation and Clonality in the Myelodysplastic Syndromes Microenvironment. This project will explore how mutations in stem cells lead to pre-leukemic conditions, like clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP) and myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). Both conditions increase the risk of developing acute myeloid leukemia. Successful completion of this project will improve the diagnosis, monitoring, treatment, and prevention of hematologic malignancies.

Dr. Lu’s research project on acute myeloid leukemia was supported by the Leukemia Research Foundation in 2019-2020.