Vijay Sankaran
@bloodgenes
Followers
11K
Following
24K
Media
372
Statuses
6K
Pediatric Hematologist/Oncologist, Geneticist, Stem Cell Biologist - @HHMINEWS, @BostonChildrens, @DanaFarber, @broadinstitute
Boston, MA
Joined August 2015
Remarkable to see that our discoveries over 15 years ago would enable such tremendous advances for sickle cell disease and thalassemia!!! Incredible to think that the final sentence of our 2008 paper would be prophetic (.
40
115
746
20 years ago I was finishing my first year at @harvardmed. Never did I imagine I would be here today. Grateful to all the incredible lab members past and present, amazing mentors, remarkable colleagues, and others who have made this possible! 🙏 for all those who wrote letters!
131
13
707
I am tremendously honored to join this amazing cohort of @HHMINEWS Investigators! I am incredibly fortunate to have worked with incredible people in our laboratory and excited for all that we will be able to do in the coming years!.
⭐️ Big news! HHMI is investing $300+ million in 26 new #HHMIInvestigators from 19 US institutions. These top scientists will drive groundbreaking research in diverse fields, from neuroscience to immunology to structural biology & beyond. Welcome to HHMI!.
156
24
570
Delighted to have our paper, led by @jmartinrufino, on conducting massively parallel base editing screens in primary human hematopoietic cells out in @CellCellPress today. Can help improve therapeutic approaches for #leukemia and #sicklecell disease: .
28
82
462
Interested in how cellular barcoding can help us better understand and treat human diseases?. Please check out this review from @leonard_zon, @JswLab, and I in @ScienceMagazine today:
12
113
438
Our review on how advances in #genomics have impacted our understanding of #hematopoiesis was published in @CellCellPress today. Grateful to the reviewers and editors for valuable guidance. We tried to cover a lot and apologize for all that we missed:
3
111
400
Incredibly honored to receive the 2022 @SocPedResearch E Mead Johnson Award, which many of my mentors and heroes have been prior recipients of! This recognizes the incredible work of past and current lab members, as well as tremendous collaborators and colleagues! 🙏.
Congratulations to Vijay Sankaran, MD, PhD, (@bloodgenes) on receiving the 2022 E. Mead Johnson Award from @SocPedResearch for his research using human genetic variation to advance our understanding of blood cell production!
86
12
385
Fantastic to have our paper "Deciphering cell states and genealogies of human hematopoiesis" published today in @Nature as an Accelerated Article Preview! We describe ReDeeM! Awesome work led by @chenweng1991 in a wonderful collaboration with @JswLab! .
28
83
370
Wonderful to have our paper, "Inherited blood cancer predisposition through altered transcription elongation", published (open access) in @CellCellPress today!. 🧵 (1/n)
28
73
346
Really delighted to have our paper led by @ZHAOJiawei9 showing how human hematopoietic stem cells are vulnerable to ferroptosis published in @CellCellPress:. . 🙏 to our awesome reviewers and editor for helping us improve this work significantly!
31
48
301
Are you interested in how we can learn more human biology by integrating #singlecell genomics and #GWAS?. Please check out our preprint: .#V2F mapping at single-cell resolution through network propagation. Led by @fulong_yu! A short 🧵 (1/n)
5
75
281
Incredibly honored to receive the Lodish Family Chair from @BostonChildrens! Would not have been possible without the many tremendous trainees, colleagues, and mentors that I have been fortunate to work with! Particularly meaningful that this was given by Pam and Harvey Lodish!.
Congratulations to Vijay Sankaran, MD, PhD, who was named the inaugural recipient of the Lodish Family Career Development Chair at @BostonChildrens last month. Learn more about @bloodgenes on our website:
54
9
277
Why do Latino children have the highest risk for childhood leukemia in the US? We identify one cause for this in a paper out in @CellGenomics today, led by @adamdesmith, @LWahlster, @SoYoungJeon_Eli, @fulong_yu, @CharlestonCWKC, & colleagues: .
11
66
265
Really grateful that @ASH_hematology has set up such a fantastic hybrid meeting for #ASH21, so that we can enjoy this great meeting, even if we are at home!
8
7
259
Wonderful to have our paper 'Deciphering cell states and genealogies of human haematopoiesis' led by @chenweng1991, in a great collaboration with @JswLab, published today in @Nature: .
12
49
261
Bit delayed, but delighted to see this study led by members of @SoranzoTeam (@d__vuckovic, @ParsaAkbari) and our group (@erik_bao, @CalebLareau) with numerous other fantastic colleagues published in @CellCellPress: . Even our new tough critic enjoyed it!
20
17
247
Wonderful to have our paper on a MECOM-regulated gene network in human hematopoietic stem cell maintenance and leukemia published in @NatImmunol! Terrific work from our group led by @RichardVoit, @Taoliming, and @fulong_yu:.
10
35
232
Fortunate to be able to spend such a wonderful evening with close friends, mentors, and colleagues, including several generations of Boston hematology!
15
4
231
Deeply honored to receive the 2024 @FNIH_Org Trailblazer Prize! Heartfelt thanks to the incredible lab members past and present, generous mentors, fantastic collaborators, inspiring patients/families, and others who made this possible! 🙏 to my nominator, the amazing Aviv Regev!.
The FNIH has awarded its seventh annual Trailblazer Prize for Clinician-Scientists to Vijay G. Sankaran, M.D., Ph.D., of @BostonChildrensand @harvardmed. Dr. Sankaran's groundbreaking work in genetics and hematology helped pave the way for a novel sickle cell disease treatment
27
9
231
Hopefully sharing an office with @KuchrooLab and @soumya_boston will make me less immunologically naïve
10
3
222
Very exciting to see these 2 papers in the @NEJM today demonstrating successful targeting of BCL11A to induce fetal hemoglobin to treat #SickleCell disease based off of our fundamental mechanistic studies over a decade ago! .
5
29
219
Wonderful to have our work on using genome editing in single cells to better understand hemoglobin switching published in @NatureComms today. Terrific work by Yong Shen, @JeffreyVerboon, and colleagues from the @JianXuLab and Orkin labs: 👇Short thread
11
39
222
Excited to have our paper on using mtDNA mutations for lineage tracing published in @CellCellPress today!!! Fantastic collaboration with Aviv Regev's group led by @LeifLudwig, @CalebLareau, and @julirsch!
8
65
209
Delighted to have our preclinical study led by @RichardVoit on a universal gene therapy approach for #DiamondBlackfanAnemia by regulated GATA1 expression published in @CellStemCell today:
7
34
203
To maintain lifelong blood production, hematopoietic stem cells have a number of adaptations. What is the impact? We have studied a rare disease to identify one resultant liability: ferroptosis. Pre-print: Human HSC vulnerability to ferroptosis . 🧵
13
34
185
Delighted to have our pre-print, "A genetic disorder reveals a hematopoietic stem cell regulatory network co-opted in leukemia", led by @RichardVoit, @Taoliming, and @fulong_yu in a great collaboration with #AvivRegev posted on @biorxivpreprint: .🧵👇
11
41
186
Delighted to have our work on the role of LIN28B in regulating hemoglobin switching by impacting BCL11A translation published in @NatureGenet!: . Here is a brief tweetorial of this work from Anindita Basak, @M_Munschauer, @CalebLareau, and others (1/n).
20
38
189
Deeply saddened that Sir David Weatherall, who had a profound influence on me starting from when I was a medical student, passed away today. He was the quintessential physician-scientist and his work will continue to have an enormous influence on science and medicine.
20
88
182
Today is erythropoiesis day at @BloodJournal!. Our review on erythropoiesis is out: (w/ accompanying excellent reviews from Semenza and Cazzola). Our new GATA1 mutant paper is also out: (w/ great preview:
6
40
184
Terrific to have our latest preprint out in @medrxivpreprint led by the amazing team of @la_liggett, Liam Cato, @J__Stock, and @AlexBickMDPhD: "Clonal hematopoiesis in sickle cell disease" . (Thread . 1/n)
9
42
170
Delighted to have this wonderful work led by @erik_bao, @neuron81, and @xiaotianliao in our laboratory, along with numerous colleagues published in @nature today! Grateful to the reviewers and editors for all of their guidance and feedback!
Now online @nature! Myeloproliferative neoplasms have one of the highest familial risks among cancers, but what drives this? Biobank-level GWAS and functional analyses implicate HSC function. Huge team effort w/@neuron81, @xiaotianliao, @bloodgenes 1/n
17
31
173
We know that fetal hemoglobin is an important modifier of sickle cell disease and thalassemia. How is it regulated?. Please check out our preprint: "Genetic regulation of HbF across global populations" by @liamcato, #RickLi, @realHenryLu, & co: . . 🧵
6
45
160
I am honored and excited to participate in the 50th Anniversary Celebration for the @HarvardMITmdphd Program in November with this incredible group!
3
6
156
There has been confusion over mitochondrial mutation detection, consensus variant calling, and lineage tracing in single cells. Here, we detail how ReDeeM addresses these challenges, improving detection of mtDNA mutations by 10-fold and lineage tracing. Led by @chenweng1991 and
1
33
156
Delighted to have our work on massively parallel single-cell mitochondrial genotyping and chromatin profiling, led by @CalebLareau and @LeifLudwig in our laboratory, in a wonderful collaboration with Aviv Regev, published in @NatureBiotech:
8
22
146
Our report on leukemia predisposition with germline GATA1 mutations that cause Diamond-Blackfan Anemia is out in @BloodJournal: Adds to the recent fascinating findings from @Elvin_Wag & co published in @ScienceMagazine:
5
32
149
We all have a low level of circulating CD34+ progenitor cells in our blood. But what underlies variation in amount of such cells? Delighted to contribute to this study from Nilsson and colleagues to define genetic variation underlying CD34 %:
6
29
144
Incredibly honored to receive the 2019 Seldin-Smith Award from @the_asci!!! The credit really goes to the amazing trainees in the lab I am fortunate to work with, the fantastic colleagues I am lucky to have, and all of my incredible mentors over the years!
21
4
142
A few years ago, we found a pathogenic EPO mutant that was studied in this @CellCellPress paper: . Now we are delighted to report that the patient is doing terrific with recombinant EPO tx for > 4 years in this @MedCellPress paper:
4
16
137
For those interested in the challenge of going from variant-to-function from #GWAS results or in understanding human hematopoiesis, please check out this review in @TrendsGenetics by @neuron81 and @Xiaotianliao from our group:
2
45
128
Such an exciting time: work we began over a decade ago to understand the fundamental biology of hemoglobin switching, which highlighted BCL11A, has now led to multiple promising therapeutic avenues for #SickleCell and #Thalassemia! @DFBC_PedCare.
#ASH19 Here comes another interesting early data for targeting BCL11A in #SickleCell.…. $BLUE Lentiviral vector encoding shRNA .vs. $CRSP $VRTX #CRISPR/Cas9 Gene editing. Which approach will be better for SCD?
3
18
126
Wonderful to see this work from @jmartinrufino and #AlexisCaulier from our lab out in #bioRxiv! Please check out our development and application of Perturb-multiome to enable systematic mapping of genetic variation impacting hematopoiesis!.
I am thrilled to share my preprint with #AlexisCaulier and others in @bloodgenes lab, showing how systematic mapping of transcription factor networks in human hematopoiesis massively enriches for heritability of blood cell phenotypes! A thread below (1/n)
3
24
127
Wow! Learning so much about mutagenesis in hematopoietic stem cells today. Great work from @imartincorena and colleagues from @sangerinstitute in @nature showing how most mutations in blood cells arise in HSCs with single molecule mutation profiling:
1
18
119
So proud of @LeifLudwig from our group, who will be starting as a group leader in the coming weeks in Berlin at the @BIMSB_MDC/@MDC_Berlin/@ChariteBerlin!!! . Congratulations, Leif!!! So fortunate to be able to work with amazing people like you!
0
6
116
Delighted to see this terrific work from @CalebLareau and @LeifLudwig in our group showing how mitochondrial mutations can be used to track clonal mosaicism longitudinally in human hematopoietic cells (in bulk) published in @BloodAdvances: .
3
24
115
Incredibly gratifying to see the work that we started many years ago, which led to our discovery of BCL11A in hemoglobin switching, now result in curative therapies for sickle cell disease!!! Has taken a considerable effort by many translational colleagues from @ChildCancerCare!.
Sickle cell disease affects 100,000 Americans but never gets adequate attention or funding because for genetic reasons it disproportionately affects blacks. Now, finally, there are breakthroughs with gene therapy:
7
30
114
What causes variable expressivity in rare diseases such as telomere biology disorders? @michaelpoeschla & co find polygenic variation contributes: . 🧵 from Michael coming.
0
24
113
Congratulations, @KathleenHBurns!!! So excited to hear that you will be joining the @DanaFarber and @BrighamWomens as Chair of the Department of Oncologic Pathology! Wonderful news and will be terrific to have you in Boston!.
17
7
109
It is a testament to incredible fundamental and translational science that within a year of the #SARSCoV2 virus being identified to cause #COVID19, a #vaccine was developed! Grateful to receive the first dose to protect my patients, colleagues, friends, and family! #CovidVaccine
4
4
109
Exciting to see what our discoveries have led to so far!! Lights a 🔥 under us, as well as many other physicians and scientists!.
A Welcome to the Era of Genome Editing today @NEJM .Overview @G_Q_Daley .Casgevy for Sickle-Cell Disease.Casgevy for Beta-Thalassemia.
1
14
114
I am incredibly fortunate to be able to work with this amazing group @HHMINEWS, @BostonChildrens, @DanaFarber, @harvardmed, @broadinstitute!!! .🙏🩸🧬
0
6
115
Our paper on how ribosome levels affect lineage commitment during human hematopoiesis from @RajKhajur and colleagues (including @julirsch) is out in @CellCellPress: (1/n)
8
53
108
Great to see my medical school classmate @MarsonLab at #ASH23 @ASH_hematology!!! We both like to read and edit genomes to treat diseases!
5
2
107
Delighted to have our work led by @RichardVoit from our group featured on the cover of @CellStemCell today. Artwork by the amazing @DrawImpacts:. Stay tuned as we work on initiating a clinical trial for this approach!
7
6
110
Fantastic to have our paper on transcriptional and chromatin states in human erythropoiesis led by @LeifLudwig & @CalebLareau with other colleagues in our group and collaborators published in @CellReports today:
3
32
101
Huge congratulations to @tjflemin from our lab, who has been awarded the 2024 @ASH_hematology Outstanding Abstract Achievement Award for his top-scoring abstract that will be released soon with the other #ASH24 abstracts!
3
5
104
Delighted to see this fantastic work led by @LWahlster and @JeffreyVerboon identifying a new cause of ANKRD26 related thrombocytopenia due to a complex structural variant published in @JExpMed (open access): (1/n)
12
25
97
Wonderful dinner at Batifol in Cambridge with John Dick from @PMResearch_UHN, @BradEBernstein, @leonard_zon, and @vangalenlab!!
1
1
92
@CRISPRchef And in that very same issue of @ScienceMagazine 12 years ago, we identified BCL11A as a regulator of fetal hemoglobin, which has become a key initial target. Little did we know how these and other advances would push forward this basic science discovery. Pretty amazing!
2
5
92
I am incredibly fortunate to work with this amazing team in our lab at @DFBC_PedCare @BostonChildrens @broadinstitute!!! Wonderful lab dinner last night at MIDA in the South End!
2
3
96
I am tremendously grateful and fortunate to work with such an amazing group (and some additional folks who could not join us)!!!
1
6
97
Wonderful to see our collaborative work examining shared and distinct genetic etiologies for different types of clonal hematopoiesis, from @DerekWBrown_1, @liamcato, @ZhaoDylan, @jrbperry, @mitchiela, and colleagues, published today:
2
27
95
Great to see our preprint out examining shared and distinct genetic causes of different types of clonal hematopoiesis! Terrific collaboration with @DerekWBrown_1, @liamcato, @ZhaoDylan, @jrbperry, @mitchiela: .
1
27
97
Fascinating pre-print in @biorxivpreprint on hematopoiesis in long-lived naked-mole rats: More quiescent HSCs than in mice and no sign of some key hematopoietic TFs like RUNX1, GFI1B, GFI1, etc.
2
26
88
How can we go from variant to function for #GWAS? Gene-centric functional screens may be one potentially valuable approach (here for human #hematopoiesis)! Proud of this work led by @neuron81 and Sean McFarland, as well as other colleagues in @eLife:
1
31
91
Thank you! An incredible honor to receive the #SeldinSmithAward this year and so wonderful to have an introduction by my mentor, David Nathan! #JointMeeting2019.
This year's #SeldinSmithAward winner is Vijay Sankaran @bloodgenes, whom David Nathan described as a "walking google." Congratulations on this well-deserved honor!! #JointMeeting2019.
5
6
85
Sad to miss this in person, but absolutely wonderful to see my mentor Harvey Lodish receive the #ASH21 Wallace H. Coulter Award for Lifetime Achievement in Hematology from @ASH_hematology! So incredibly well deserved! Fortunate to have met Harvey 15 years ago!
3
4
87
Delighted to release a significantly updated version of our pre-print, "Shared and distinct genetic etiologies for different types of clonal hematopoiesis", led by @DerekWBrown_1, @liamcato, @ZhaoDylan, @jrbperry, @mitchiela on @biorxivpreprint:
0
11
83
Incredibly fortunate to work with this tremendous, fun, and diverse group of individuals (and a few others who could not join us) in our lab! Excited for all that we will do together in 2023!
2
0
87
Grateful to @NatureGenet for this nice highlight of our recent paper (:. Mapping genetic variants to cellular contexts:.
0
3
82
Excited to have our preprint out in @biorxivpreprint showing how genetic predisposition for acquiring MPNs modulates hematopoietic stem cell function. Terrific work led by @erik_bao, @neuron81, @Xiaotianliao, and other fantastic colleagues:
3
25
82
Delighted to have our study showing how CDC42 dysfunction can cause myelofibrosis published! Terrific work led by @JeffreyVerboon and Dilnar Mahmut in our group, along with great collaborators:
6
12
80
Incredibly delighted that @jmartinrufino and Soumyaa Mazumder from our lab both matched for their pediatrics residencies at the Boston Combined Residency Program (#BCRP) at @BostonChildrens and @The_BMC!!! Congratulations!!! The future of pediatrics (+ heme/onc) is very bright!!
6
3
80
Amazing study in @nature from @jacob_hanna and colleagues showing ex vivo development of mouse embryos from E5.5 through E11! I wonder if HSCs have started to form in the AGM at the end of this ex vivo period:
3
11
79
Wonderful Hemoglobin Switching Meeting in Puerto Rico!!! Amazing science and people! Fantastic to organize this meeting with my friend and mentor, @leonard_zon, as well as #MarjorieBrand, @JohnStrouboulis, and @JianXuLab! 🩸🌴🍹
0
4
81
Truly honored to have received the 2018 #DrukierPrize in Children's Health Research today at @WeillCornell! Had an absolutely wonderful experience in NY today! I am grateful to the Selection Committee, the Drukier family, and the amazing people at @WeillCornell!
Today: Dr. Vijay Sankaran @bloodgenes, of @harvardstemcell @broadinstitute @BostonChildrens @ChildCancerCare & @DanaFarber, will receive the 2018 #DrukierPrize in Children's Health Research for his research in pediatric hematology & oncology, human genetics, & stem cell biology
15
5
76
I am incredibly fortunate to work with this incredible group (+ a few awesome folks, who could not join us)! As adept on the rock wall as they are at generating and analyzing genomic and functional data!
4
1
77
Grateful to the fantastic editors at the @BostonGlobe and @GlobeIdeas for giving my much better half and I the opportunity to write this op-ed:. Can we prevent childhood cancer?.
2
10
75
Great to be in NYC for the first time since the pandemic started! Excited to see many friends and colleagues tomorrow while visiting @nyulangone!
3
0
77
Fortunate to work with fantastic trainees and staff in our @DFBC_PedCare program, as we care for our patients with blood disorders, including observing the many hematologic manifestations of #COVID19!
1
1
69
Thank you, @EricTopol!!! I am incredibly fortunate for all the opportunities I have had to be inspired by patients, trainees, colleagues, and mentors over the years!.
How meeting a patient changed a career.An inspirational story, by @bloodgenes @NatureMedicine @BostonChildrens @broadinstitute
1
5
74
Fantastic day kayaking on the Charles River! I am very lucky to work with this incredible group (and some other awesome folks who were unable to join)!
0
0
72
Excited to have this terrific study - #V2F mapping at #SingleCell resolution through network propagation - led by @fulong_yu along with a fantastic team published in @NatureBiotech: . 🙏 Editors/ Reviewers for valuable comments that improved this work.
Are you interested in how we can learn more human biology by integrating #singlecell genomics and #GWAS?. Please check out our preprint: .#V2F mapping at single-cell resolution through network propagation. Led by @fulong_yu! A short 🧵 (1/n)
5
16
71
When mom is out working to vanquish blood cancers with @happydsn, it is a great time to learn about hematopoiesis!
6
1
72
An important perspective on saving the endangered physician-scientist in @NEJM: I am shocked that only ~1.5% of physicians in the workforce are physician-scientists!.
7
30
68
Incredibly proud of @RichardVoit who is a recipient of a 2024 @the_asci Emerging-Generation Award!!! Congratulations, Richard!!
4
0
67
@VirusesImmunity @BioRender @ShizAoki Thank you, @VirusesImmunity! This is valuable! Given this paper in pediatric patients(, incubation time may need to be extended further?.
3
25
64
3
27
71
Wonderful to have our manuscript, "Clonal hematopoiesis in sickle cell disease", from @la_liggett, @liamcato, @J__Stock, @AlexBickMDPhD, and other colleagues, published in the @jclinicalinvest today:
Terrific to have our latest preprint out in @medrxivpreprint led by the amazing team of @la_liggett, Liam Cato, @J__Stock, and @AlexBickMDPhD: "Clonal hematopoiesis in sickle cell disease" . (Thread . 1/n)
1
14
69
Check out this awesome 🧵 from @chenweng1991 👇!!!.
Very delighted to share our work Deciphering cell states and genealogies of human hematopoiesis online today in @Nature (Accelerated Preview version). It is a really great collaboration of Weissman lab @JswLab and Sankaran lab @bloodgenes 🧵(1/n)
7
6
72
An important thread on our latest preprint 👇👇. Also highlights the incredible resilience and dedication of a brilliant scientist and an exceptional human being. So proud of you, @chenweng1991! 🙏 also to my friend and collaborator, @JswLab!.
A recent commentary in bioRxiv discussed data analysis for our mtDNA-based lineage tracing technology ReDeeM. We welcome the points raised and are happy to address these concerns. We believe this will foster constructive dialogue (1/n)
1
7
69
Bravo @AlbaRMeira from @AdamMead_Oxford laboratory!!! Terrific talk at #ASH21 plenary revealing how #singlecell multi-omic analyses can reveal how inflammatory interferon signaling can drive TP53 mutant clone expansion in the progression of MPNs to AML!
1
14
68
Excited to take part in this upcoming @NatureGenet webcast with Kristen Brennand and Catherine Potenski on the challenges of going from Variant to Function! Please join us if you are interested in these approaches! #GWAS #genetics #Genomics.
Register now for our webcast Variant to Function with Kristen Brennand and Vijay Sankaran @bloodgenes Nov. 7
1
19
63
A bit delayed, but terrific to have our paper from Yong Shen and colleagues examining the functional consequences of BCL11A missense variants on fetal hemoglobin silencing published in @PLOSGenetics:
0
13
64
Wonderful recognition!!! Much more to still learn about the fetal-to-adult hemoglobin switch!.
The #ShawPrize in #LifeScienceandMedicine 2024 is awarded to Swee Lay Thein & Stuart Orkin for their discovery of the genetic and molecular mechanisms underlying the fetal-to-adult hemoglobin switch. Congratulations to both laureates!.@NIH .@nih_nhlbi.@harvardmed
0
7
66
Lucky to work with this amazing team!!! Holiday lab dinner!
2
1
62
Incredibly proud of postdoctoral fellow @neuron81 from our group who is becoming an Assistant Professor of Cell Biology at @EinsteinMed and @ae_cancercenter this fall! Congratulations, Satish!!! Can't wait to see the exciting things that will come from the Nandakumar Lab! #newPI.
I am thrilled to announce that I will join @EinsteinMed @ae_cancercenter as Assistant Professor of Cell Biology this Fall. Grateful for the support from my incredible mentors & colleagues: @bloodgenes @Zfish_Blood_Lab.@pnatarajanmd @leonard_zon and @Agarwal_Lab.
0
4
61