Rate My Professor David Kent

Professor David Kent is Deputy Head of Department (Research) in the Department of Biology at the University of York. He earned a BSc in Genetics and English Literature at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and obtained his PhD in Genetics in 2009 at the University of British Columbia, Canada. His postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge focused on malignant blood stem cell biology, where he established his research group in 2015. In 2019, the laboratory relocated to the University of York and the York Biomedical Research Institute, and in 2023 he joined the Centre for Blood Research. Kent leads the HAEM Cluster for the MRC National Mouse Genetics Network, serves on the MRC Molecular and Cellular Medicine Board panel, and is Vice-Chair of the European Hematology Association Fellowships and Grants Committee. He contributes as faculty to EHA training programmes and the European Summer School on Stem Cells, and directs the online course Hematology 101 on blood stem cells and clinical applications. In 2025, he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. Kent also advances science communication through The Black Hole blog and contributions to the Signals blog on regenerative medicine.

Kent's research centres on blood stem cell biology, encompassing molecular regulators of normal blood stem cells, novel methods to track and quantify blood stem cells in humans, clonal evolution of cancers from single cells, physical and mechanical biology of stem cells, and computational approaches. Key publications include Sakurai et al., Nature (2023); Spencer-Chapman and Cull et al., Nature Medicine (2023); Nestorowa et al., Blood (2016); Lee-Six et al., Nature (2018); and Ortmann et al., New England Journal of Medicine (2015). His pioneering use of acquired somatic mutations as endogenous barcodes has transformed stem cell tracking, surpassing clinical panels in monitoring cancer risks during gene therapy trials for sickle cell disease. He leads projects assessing driver mutation frequency and cancer risk in international cohorts and holds Cancer Research UK Programme Foundation Award funding.