Throughout life, our hematopoietic (blood-forming) stem cells differentiate into all our different types of blood cells. When a blood-forming stem cell incurs a mutation, the blood cells that it forms inherit this mutation. The growth of this population of defective blood cells is a phenomenon known as clonal hematopoiesis (CH), which usually occurs in older people and is associated with an increased risk for developing blood cancers and cardiovascular disease.

The National Institutes of Health has awarded Aditi Shastri, M.D., and Sofiya Milman, M.D., M.S., a five-year, $5.18 million grant to research aging-related CH in two Ashkenazi Jewish cohorts that include individuals aged 95 and older. They are being studied at Albert Einstein College of Medicine to better understand how centenarians can resist developing age-related diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer’s. By studying people in these cohorts, Drs. Shastri, Milman and their team will determine the frequency of CH in long-lived individuals, the types of CH mutations they experience, and whether their longevity somehow protects them from developing harmful CH mutations.

Dr. Shastri is a member of the National Cancer Institute-designated Montefiore Einstein Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Stem Cell & Cancer Biology Research Program and Blood Cancer Institute, and associate professor of oncology, medicine, and developmental & molecular biology at Einstein. Dr. Milman is a member of Einstein’s Institute for Aging Research, interim vice chair for research and professor of medicine, and professor of genetics at Einstein. (1R01AG088659-01)