I was born and raised in Southern California, attended UCLA with a major in Applied Math and Physical Chemistry and Harvard Medical School, with postdoctoral research training in the laboratory of David Livingston at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, as well as clinical training with a residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Board Certification in Medical Oncology at Dana Farber. I established my own independent laboratory in 1984 at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, and since 2008 a laboratory at the Cancer Science Institute Singapore, where I served as founding Director.

For the past 39 years my lab has studied gene regulation in normal differentiation and cancer, initially with a focus on myeloid development and acute myeloid leukemia (AML). My laboratory has contributed to understanding the role of transcription factors in cell differentiation and disruption of these pathways in leukemia, lung cancer, and liver cancer. Current efforts include basic studies understanding gene regulation with an aim to manipulate gene expression in in normal and cancer stem cells as well as exploiting differences as a basis for targeted stem cell therapy. Since 2008, my lab has also studied the role of nuclear long noncoding RNAs, and current efforts include studies on antisense RNAs, RNA editing, and noncoding RNAs in myeloid differentiation, gene regulation, DNA methylation, DNA replication, and cancer. Since 2010, the lab has also investigated the role of the stem cell oncofetal protein SALL4 in cancer and leukemia.