Dr. Wong earned his MD PhD from The University of Chicago. He performed his graduate research in the laboratory of Dr. Tao Pan, investigating RNA folding during transcription.

He completed his Internal Medicine residency and Hematology/Oncology fellowship at Barnes Jewish Hospital/Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He performed his post-doctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. Daniel Link, investigating how hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) evolve into therapy-related AML/MDS (AML or MDS arising after chemotherapy exposure). His work demonstrated that specific mutant HSCs are selected for by chemotherapy, eventually evolving into a leukemic clone.

Dr. Wong's research has been published in a number of journals, including Nature, Nature Communications, Blood, Cancer Research, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences.

While Dr. Wong was a faculty member in St. Louis, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. He hopes for a similar occurrence in Ann Arbor.

Dr. Wong’s research focuses on how hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) evolve into leukemia. HSPCs acquire somatic mutations with age. Dr. Wong is interested in how HSPCs harboring specific mutations alter hematopoiesis, promote leukemogenesis, and impact both hematologic and non-hematologic diseases. As many of these mutations provide HSPCs with a fitness advantage under cellular stress, Dr. Wong is also interested in understanding how different cellular stressors (e.g. inflammation, cytotoxic therapy, etc.) impact HSPC biology. He is investigating these questions through different approaches including next generation sequencing and mouse modeling.

Specialties:
Modeling of hematopoiesis
Leukemogenesis
Clonal evolution