Michael Spencer Chapman: Lessons from human phylogenies from genome-wide somatic mutations

Single Cell Focus Area Guest Lecture

Short bio

Michael is a clinician scientist based in London, UK, currently practicing as a haematologist at the Royal London Hospital. After completing a Master’s degree in organic chemistry, he then trained in medicine, later specialising in haematology. He completed his PhD in 2022, during which he worked with Peter Campbell at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge. His work has focussed on using naturally-occurring somatic mutations in human cells as lineage markers, extending this to building large somatic phylogenies of hundreds of single cells within a tissue. He has used this approach to study foetal development, ageing of normal blood, allogeneic transplant, gene therapy as well as the fundamental mechanisms of mutagenesis. His interests are to better understand somatic evolution in blood, and its impact on the phenotypes of ageing and disease.