Roland Jäger, PhD
Group Leader
Medical University of Vienna
Department of Laboratory Medicine
Anna Spiegel Research Building
Lazarettgasse 14, AKH BT25.2, Level 6
1090 Vienna, Austria
ORCID: 0000-0003-4530-1344
Roland Jäger’s research focuses on the genetic basis of hematological cancers and clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP), a condition characterized by the expansion of blood cell clones in the absence of overt malignancy. He began his scientific career at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, where he specialized in myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN) under the mentorship of Robert Kralovics. He subsequently expanded his research to solid tumors at the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London, supported by an Erwin Schrödinger Fellowship from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), where he worked with Richard Houlston. Upon returning to CeMM, Roland took scientific leadership of projects investigating inherited thrombosis risk and pharmacogenetic determinants of treatment response in MPN. Building on his expertise in the genetics of hematological malignancies, he subsequently expanded his research to investigate the mechanisms linking clonal hematopoiesis and cardiovascular disease. Roland currently holds a permanent position at the Medical University of Vienna, combining research with responsibilities in genetic diagnostics for hematological diseases at the Vienna General Hospital.
Know-how and Research Interests
Previously, as a member of Robert Kralovics’s research group, Roland contributed to studies identifying germline genetic variants predisposing to MPN (Olcaydu et al., Nature Genetics, 2009), describing recurrent somatic chromosomal aberrations in MPN (Klampfl et al., Blood, 2011), and characterizing the mutational landscape of the MPN transcriptome (Schischlik et al., Blood, 2019). Furthermore, Roland led research projects identifying IKZF1 deletions in leukemic MPN transformation (Leukemia, 2010), characterizing TERT variants associated with MPN susceptibility (American Journal of Hematology, 2014), developing a chromatin-conformation-capture approach to map functional interactions at cancer predisposition loci (Nature Communications, 2015), and investigating IFNL4 variation as a pharmacogenetic marker of MPN treatment response (Blood, 2021). More recently, Roland has expanded his research into cardiovascular disease, investigating the interplay between clonal hematopoiesis and carotid stenosis in patients with subclinical carotid atherosclerosis (Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 2024).
In his current work, Roland aims to uncover how clonal hematopoiesis contributes to cardiovascular disease by combining advanced genomic screening with extensive exploration of clinical and laboratory data from large patient cohorts to identify novel mechanisms linking genetic alterations, inflammation, and cardiovascular risk.