May is National Cancer Research Month. Mina Xu, MD, professor of pathology, director of Hematopathology, and director of the Expert Consultation Practice in pathology, speaks about her work.

Can you tell me why your research is focused on cancer?

My interest in cancer started early in medical school. I received a research scholarship through American Society of Hematology to work on T lymphoblastic leukemia with Dr. Jon Aster, a hematopathologist at Harvard. In lab, I saw how our observations and measurements of the biopsies from patients suffering from hematologic malignancies can inform bench research and that our research findings can go back to inform the selection of therapy.

Can you briefly describe your current work?

Cancer is not static. We see that first-hand as pathologists. I am passionate about discovering how chance mutations lead to low-grade lymphomas as well as how these can then evolve into fatal high-grade cancers. Tools we are using include advanced spatial multi omics developed at Yale by my collaborator Professor Rong Fan, and machine learning approaches to quantify and correlate complex datasets. Deep molecular and phenotypic analysis of evolving tumors can help us develop precisely targeted therapies as well as give us better predictive power so that patients can obtain accurate prognoses. This work truly requires team science.

What achievement(s) are you most proud of?

The many medical students, residents and fellows who have been touched by the passion, energy and astounding talent of the faculty on our hematopathology service. One prior trainee, who is now an academic hematopathologist at another institution told me: “being at Yale with you all showed me that I can help future patients thru impactful research even though I also want to be excellent at diagnosing current patients. Your modeling of this inspires me even now.” I believe that our greatest gift is to lead the next generation to do even better than we can today, as physicians and as scientists.