Dennis Kim

Research Synopsis

My research is aiming to develop projects of: 1) biomarker discovery using genomics in leukemias and allogeneic stem cell transplantation; and 2) clinical research in chronic myeloid leukemia and graft-versus-host disease after allogeneic stem cell transplantation.

I have also been involved in multiple exome sequencing projects in acute myleoid leukemia (AML) with normal karyotype and secondary AML progressed from antecedent hematologic malignancies, as well as chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). My future direction of genomic research is to integrate multi-omics platforms to investigate leukemia genomes, thus dissecting clonal structures in a refined way.

Not only in translational research, but also in the clinical research field, I have shown significant progress in three ways: 1) clinical database registry; 2) retrospective studies using the database; and 3) generation of prospective clinical trials in CML and in graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) and other post-transplant complications after allogeneic stem cell transplantation.  First of all, I developed a clinical database of allogeneic transplant patients (especially for GVHD and post-transplant complications) and CML patients (especially for treatment outcomes after tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapy). Secondly, I have participated in multiple ongoing clinical retrospective studies generated from the registry database. Thirdly, I am involved in  multiple clinical trials. Currently, I am the principal investigator of a pivotal Canadian tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) discontinuation clinical trial and am also a chair of the correlative part of this trial, entitled "Treatment-free Remission Accomplished with Dasatinib (TRAD)". This is the first Canadian TKI discontinutation trial for the management of CML.