Zhimeng Wu

Our bone marrow makes hundreds of billions of blood cells every day, relying on a small pool of haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) that must balance self-renewal against differentiating into mature blood cells such as platelets and immune cells. During the ageing process and pre-leukaemic stage, this balance is corrupted, and the underlying reason is still unknown. My PhD asks how healthy HSCs control the balance between expansion and differentiation, and what drives its collapse in ageing and early disease. Answering this could point towards ways to rejuvenate ageing HSCs, and towards therapies that target leukaemia at its earliest stage.

Who or what inspired you to pursue your research interests?

I trained in clinical medicine as an undergraduate, where I cared for patients with blood cancers and saw how much they suffered. During my master's laboratory research, I found that many of the problems I had encountered in the clinic can be studied in the lab, and that these work eventually benefit patients. I hope to build a career as a physician-scientist, bringing clinical questions into the laboratory and contributing to research that improves how blood diseases are treated.