Eric J. Duncavage, MD

Research Interests

As a physician-scientist, my time is split between clinical sign out of hematologic biopsies and molecular diagnostic cases as well as the development of new clinical diagnostic methods and understanding the molecular mechanisms of MDS.  My long-term clinical vision is to apply advanced high throughput molecular methods such as whole-genome sequencing and error corrected measurable residual disease sequencing to clinical care in order for clinicians to make better-informed treatment decisions. I have a long-standing interest in sequencing-based cancer diagnostics and developed the first CAP/CLIA accredited NGS-based cancer sequencing assay at an academic laboratory in 2011. Outside of Washington University, I served on the first standards committee to address NGS-based clinical testing (Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute, m09) and co-chaired the AMP/ASCO/CAP guidelines for somatic variant reporting in cancer. As a past K12 award recipient and SPORE career enhancement program awardee, I have spent the last seven years working with established leaders in the field of molecular oncology research including Drs. Matthew Walter and Tim Ley. During this time I developed targeted ultra-sensitive sequencing methods for the detection of low-frequency variants in MDS and AML for measurable residual disease (MRD) applications that now form the basis of our clinical testing at Washington University and were funded in part through an IMAT R33 award. More recently my laboratory has studied the use of whole-genome sequencing to replace conventional cytogenetics in the clinical evaluation of hematologic malignancies.