Where Are They Now? Sanket Shah, PhD

Sanket Shah, PhD, is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Weill Cornell Medicine.

When did you become interested in the study of medicine? In lymphoma specifically?

My interest in science started early. My father is a doctor, and growing up, I watched him treat patients as a general physician. Seeing medicine up close was the first step in my curiosity about how diseases work inside the body.

During my college years, oncology quickly became my favorite subject. I was fascinated by how cancer alters normal biology, and the more we learn, the more questions are emerging. That curiosity contributed to my decision to build a long-term career in cancer research.

My specific interest in lymphoma began during my postdoctoral training, when I was exposed to the complexity of B-cell biology and the heterogeneity within diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). The more I learned, the more I wanted to understand how molecular diversity contributes to disease biology and how precision therapy can influence it.

At what point in your career did you receive funding from the Lymphoma Research Foundation? What kind of grant(s) did you receive?

I received the Lymphoma Research Foundation’s then Lymphoma Clinical Research Mentoring Program (LCRMP, now LSRMP) award in 2018 while I was in my final year of hem/onc fellowship at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. The award supported my work during advanced fellowship training in lymphoma and the transition to my first year on faculty at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

At what point in your career did you receive funding from the Lymphoma Research Foundation? What kind of grant did you receive?

I received a Postdoctoral Fellowship award from the Lymphoma Research Foundation in 2023, during the early phase of my postdoctoral training at Weill Cornell Medicine.

What scientific project did you pursue as part of your postdoctoral fellowship? What do you hope your project will contribute to our understanding of lymphoma? To treating people with lymphoma?

My fellowship supported a project investigating how SETD2 mutations, which are enriched in African ancestry DLBCL, drive a senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) and reshape the lymphoma microenvironment. I hope this work deepens our understanding of how immune evasion occurs in specific genetic backgrounds and contributes to more precise treatment strategies for the patients.

Was the support and grant funding you received from the Foundation vital to advancing/dedicating your career to studying lymphoma? Please explain why you feel this way.

Yes, absolutely! The Lymphoma Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship grant gave me the resources andconfidence to pursue a high-risk, hypothesis-driven project. When I started, I had no preliminary data, only a strong scientific idea. The fellowship made it possible to follow the biology, generate foundational data, and now build a bigger scientific question.

How has epigenetic therapy evolved since you were funded by the Foundation?

Knowing that DLBCL frequently carries mutations in epigenetic modifiers and the disease shows heterogeneity, the future seems promising for precision epigenetic therapy. These therapies not only modulate tumor-intrinsic programs but also reshape the tumor microenvironment, opening the door to combinations with immunotherapy.

How has your involvement with the Foundation continued since receiving funding from the Foundation?

I have stayed actively connected with the Foundation community through meetings, seminars, and interactions with other fellows. The network has been amazing in shaping my growth and connecting me with other researchers focused on understanding lymphoma biology.

Why is the Foundation’s mission and focus on lymphoma-specific research and programming important? Put another way: How would the lymphoma community be impacted if there were no Lymphoma Research Foundation?

The Foundation fills a critical gap. Lymphoma is a diverse set of diseases, and many biologically important questions would remain unexplored without dedicated, disease-specific funding.

When I began my project, I only had a hypothesis-driven idea. The Lymphoma Research Foundation’s support allowed me to take that risk. Without organizations like them, early-stage investigators would have fewer opportunities to pursue innovative ideas that could meaningfully contribute to disease understanding and effectively contribute to patient care.

Your abstract has been selected to be presented at the ASH Annual Meeting this year. What does that mean to you, and why do you feel that it is important to share your research with the broader community? How do you hope your ASH abstract will impact the lymphoma community?

Being selected for an ASH Plenary session is an incredible honor — especially because our work is defining a new subtype of DLBCL driven by DNA-damage-sensing mutations, particularly enriched in patients of African ancestry.

This subtype can be readily identified using clinical markers, which means it has real potential for immediate clinical translation. It also opens the door for precision epigenetic therapy combined with immunotherapy, tailored to ancestry-linked biology.

Sharing these findings at ASH ensures that the broader lymphoma community becomes aware of this biology and can begin to integrate it into research, diagnosis, and precisely for treatment.

What research or projects are you currently pursuing that you would like to share with our readers?

I am currently focused on understanding how DNA-damage-associated mutations contribute to specific phenotypes and how they shape the lymphoma microenvironment.

I am also studying how precision epigenetic drugs change the immune landscapes and how they can be combined with immunotherapies to improve responses. These projects cover patient samples, genetically engineered mouse models, and advanced spatial proteomics.

Do you have a personal connection to lymphoma? Can you share a little bit about how that motivates your work?

Yes. While I was recovering from a severe episode of necrotizing pancreatitis last year, my mother was diagnosed with DLBCL. Experiencing the disease I study every day, suddenly, within my own family, was really difficult.

Her diagnosis has given my work an even deeper meaning and a personal interest. I feel extremely fortunate to be alive and healthy today, and it motivates me every day to push the science forward.

What are you most excited about in the field of lymphoma research today? Why?

I am most excited about our growing ability to integrate genomics, epigenetics, spatial profiling, and immunology to identify new biological subtypes of lymphoma. We are able to understand why certain groups of patients respond differently — and design therapies tailored to those differences.

It feels like the field is moving toward a future where treatments are promising, and that is inspiring.