Linda B. Baughn, Ph.D.

Linda B. Baughn, Ph.D., FACMG, has a broad translational research background in cancer biology with a focused clinical genomics interest in hematologic malignancies, specifically multiple myeloma. In addition to her role as a co-director of the Clinical Genomics Laboratory and board-certified clinical laboratory cancer geneticist, she has been actively engaged in myeloma translational research since 2004.

Focus areas

• Clinical: Improved clinical diagnostic approaches for hematologic malignancies. Utilization of next-generation sequencing techniques in the characterization of genomic abnormalities such as structural and copy number variations in patients with multiple myeloma and other hematologic malignancies including AML and B-ALL.
• Translational Research: Understanding multiple myeloma drug resistance. Identification of novel biomarkers of drug sensitive and resistant myeloma cells using genetic models and multiparameter time of flight mass cytometry (CyTOF). CyTOF can be used to phenotypically characterize single cells using numerous antibody combinations to identify rare subpopulations and appreciate clonal heterogeneity.
• Translational Research: Health disparity research. African Americans are two to three times more likely to develop multiple myeloma. It is important to elucidate mechanisms of this racial disparity. Dr. Baughn and colleagues have utilized genotyping data from single nucleotide polymorphisms that are ancestrally informative to calculate individual ancestry as a novel approach rather than relying only on self-report ancestry to understand health disparities of multiple myeloma.