Using evolutionary principles to predict who is most at risk of developing leukaemia

Dr Jamie Blundell

CRUK Early Detection Programme , University of Cambridge

Dr Blundell is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and group leader in the CRUK Cambridge Centre Early Detection Programme. He trained as a theoretical physicist at Cambridge and then as a quantitative biologist at Stanford. In 2017 he established his own group in the early detection programme in Cambridge. His lab studies the somatic evolution that occurs in healthy tissues as we age and how this evolution is altered at the earliest stages of cancer. Focusing on dynamic changes in blood, Jamie’s lab develops and applies novel ultra-sensitive sequencing technologies to large collections of longitudinal blood samples and then applies quantitative principles from evolutionary theory to develop personalised “forecasts” of future cancer risk and identify those most in need of intervention. The lab is also interested in adaptive immune repertoire dynamics in cancer and other diseases.