Dr. Alnoor's research program is centered on developing translational molecular tools to advance cancer diagnostics and precision oncology, with a particular emphasis on hematologic malignancies.His early work investigated the genomics of VEXAS syndrome, a multisystem autoinflammatory disorder with a known predisposition to myeloid neoplasms. This experience has shaped his broader interest in characterizing the clinical and molecular complexity of pre-malignant and immune-driven disorders that evolve into hematologic cancers.
A key focus of his current work involves applying Oxford Nanopore long-read sequencing technology to study tumor-specific methylation patterns in circulating tumor DNA. These efforts aim to enable non-invasive cancer detection and distinguish clonal hematopoiesis from true neoplastic variants.During his molecular genetic pathology fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis, Dr. Alnoor has been engaged in several advanced clinical genomics initiatives. He validated Haplotect, a haplotype-based method for detecting DNA contamination and bone marrow chimerism in next-generation sequencing assays, enhancing assay reliability and clinical utility. He is currentlycompleting a study evaluating Illumina short-readsequencing for the detection of measurable residualdisease in acute myeloid leukemia, benchmarking itsperformance against flow cytometry.
His future work aims to integrate AI-driven classifiers using methylation and genomic features to enhance disease classification, prognostication,and real-time clinical decision-making. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, his research seeks to bridge molecular diagnostics, computational pathology, and clinical oncology to advance the field of precision medicine.
