Who We Fund

Universite de Lausanne

Nicola Vannini after his MSc degree in Biological Sciences obtained at the University of Parma, moved to La Jolla (CA) where he worked for two years at the Burnham Institute in the laboratory of Prof. John C. Reed studying the metabolic basis of cardiac aging. He completed his PhD at the National Institute for Cancer Research in Genova (Italy) under the supervision of Prof. Adriana Albini, where he worked on nutritional interventions to prevent tumor progression. After his PhD he moved to EPFL (Lausanne, Switzerland) in the laboratory directed by Prof. Matthias Lütolf and Prof. Olaia Naveiras at the EPFL, where he developed targeted metabolic interventions to boost hematopoietic recovery.

Since March 2016 Nicola Vannini is group leader at the Ludwig Cancer Institute at the University of Lausanne . His primary research goals are the understanding of metabolic changes occurring during aging in the hematopoietic and immune compartments and their impact on cancer immunotherapy.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Mitochondrial reprogramming to restore age-driven dysfunction in T cell and boost CAR-T cell therapy

Maine Medical Center

Dr. Michaela Reagan is a Faculty Scientist II at the MaineHealth Institute for Research and an Associate Professor at Tufts University School of Medicine. She received her B.S. in general Engineering from Harvey Mudd College (2006) and Ph.D. from Tufts University in Biomedical Engineering in the field of breast cancer bone metastasis (2011). She then performed her post-doctoral research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in the laboratory of Dr. Irene Ghobrial (2011-2015). Dr. Reagan is a member of the Finance Committee of the American Society of Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR) and is the past chair of the ASBMR’s Women’s Committee. Since 2015, she has led innovative, transdisciplinary, basic and translational research in the Reagan Laboratory at MaineHealth with the goal of identifying cancer vulnerabilities that can lead to new treatments or cures for multiple myeloma (MM) patients. Her unique research is focused on the interactions between obesity, adipocytes and myeloma cells.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Multiple Myeloma Support from the Microenvironment: Bone Marrow Adipocytes and the Fatty Acid Binding Proteins

The University of Melbourne

Professor Jane Oliaro is an internationally recognized cancer immunologist motivated to translate scientific discoveries into the clinic. Her research experience spans the fields of T cell biology and tumor immunology, with a focus on the application of new technology to identify novel therapies to enhance immunotherapy for the treatment of cancer. She has a proven track record of undertaking successful collaborative research leading to high quality publications in influential journals including Science, Immunity, Science Immunology; successful funding and awards (including 9 CIA project grants, NHMRC fellowship, NHMRC ‘Ten of the Best’ Research Project Award and NHMRC Inaugural Achievement Award) and over 15 conference invitations in the past 5 years. As Chief Scientist for the Centre of Excellence in Cellular Immunotherapy Translation Laboratory at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, she leads a preclinical program focused on the development of novel cell-based immunotherapies for translation into pilot clinical trials.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Improving CAR-T cell therapy outcomes for patients with for aggressive lymphoma and multiple myeloma

University of Miami

Dr Walker is currently at the University of Miami where is a research Professor in the Division of Myeloma and is also the SWOG Myeloma Committee Chair of Translational Medicine. Most of his work has revolved around utilizing primary patient material with a range of techniques including gene expression and mapping arrays to next generation sequencing technologies to identify the genetic determinants that can be used to sub-classify myeloma. These determinants include common copy number abnormalities, somatic mutations and gene expression profiles which can be used to risk stratify patients according to biological criteria, which in turn can determine the prognosis of the patient. His lab currently employs single-cell technologies, mouse models, and epigenomics to determine the impact and mechanism of action of these abnormalities that drive myeloma pathogenesis.

Program Name(s)

Discovery

Project Title

Genomic and epigenomic interactions of complex structural variants affecting outcome in multiple myeloma

Columbia University Medical Center

I am a pediatric oncologist and health outcomes researcher at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. My research aims to identify how social determinants of health drive care and outcomes in children, adolescents, and young adults (AYA) with leukemia and lymphoma. At Columbia, I am the institutional Principal Investigator for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute ALL Consortium and I serve on the Children’s Oncology Group Hodgkin Lymphoma (HL) Steering Committee. In these roles I participate in the design and implementation of new clinical trials, and in the development of embedded health services studies. My recent work includes a series of large-scale analyses (using clinical trials and population data) evaluating outcomes by race/ethnicity and age in ALL and HL. Increasingly, I am working to identify barriers to clinical trial participation among diverse populations, and on leveraging the clinical trial infrastructure to collect prospective data on social determinants of health.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Leveraging cancer registries, clinical trials, and community partnerships to address disparities in pediatric, adolescent, and young adult lymphoma

The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

Dr. Shannon Maude is a pediatric oncologist and clinical trialist in the Cancer Immunotherapy Program at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Dr. Maude received her M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and completed her residency in pediatrics as well as fellowship in pediatric hematology-oncology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Maude developed the Cancer Immunotherapy and BMT Fellowship at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and currently serves as a Medical Director in the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Maude is a member of the Children’s Oncology Group ALL committee and leads investigator-initiated and international multi-center clinical trials of engineered T cell therapies for childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Improving CAR T-cell Therapy Efficacy in Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia by Optimizing Design and Placement

Northwestern University

Dr. Jaehyuk Choi is an Associate Professor of Dermatology and of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He received his A.B. in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard, and his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale. He was a dermatology resident and a post-doctoral fellow in genetics at Yale. Since graduating from medical school, Dr. Choi is the recipient of the NIH New Innovator Award, the Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator Award, the Doris Duke Clinician Scientist Development Award, and is a recent inductee into the American Society for Clinical Investigation.  Dr. Choi is a clinically active physician-scientist with a clinical and scientific focus on T cell lymphomas. His research group is interested in bench-to-bedside approaches to improve clinical care for patients with these diseases. To do so, he investigates the genetic mechanisms that underlie disease pathogenesis. This approach provides important clues as to what makes each patient unique and how to improve treatments for patients.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Identification of novel therapeutic strategies for aggressive subtypes of CTCL

Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Gill obtained his medical degree and Ph.D in immunology from the University of Melbourne, and trained in hematology at St Vincent’s Hospital, the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Australia. In 2008 he moved to the United States, first to pursue a post-doctoral fellowship in cellular therapy at Stanford University, and then in 2011 to the University of Pennsylvania where he is now an Associate Professor of Medicine. Dr. Gill’s clinical practice is in leukemia and bone marrow transplantation. He has led clinical trials of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells for chronic and acute leukemias. Dr. Gill’s research laboratory focuses on the interface between adoptive cellular therapy and genetic engineering.

Program Name(s)

Discovery

Project Title

Role of the AML "Immunome" in response and failure of chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Dr. Stahl is a member of the Adult Leukemia Group at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and an Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. His research focus is on early phase clinical trials in myeloid malignancies including acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes. He authored and co-authored more than 70 peer reviewed publications and has presented his research in multiple national and international meetings. He received the ASCO Conquer Cancer Foundation Young Investigator Award, the ASH HONORS Award and several abstract achievement awards. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Leukemia & Lymphoma and serves as a reviewer for several journals including Blood, Blood Advances and Clinical Cancer Research. He graduated from Hannover Medical School in Germany and completed his internal medicine residency and chief residency at Yale School of Medicine and his Hematology and Oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Memory-like natural killer cells and venetoclax to eradicate measurable residual disease in AML

Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Garfall is a hematologist-oncologist specializing in the care of multiple myeloma patients and research on new multiple myeloma therapies. He is a member of the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is an Assistant Professor of Medicine. Dr. Garfall completed his undergraduate studies at Princeton University, medical school at New York University, residency in internal medicine at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, and hematology/oncology fellowship at Penn. Dr. Garfall’s research focuses on immunotherapy. He has conducted clinical trials with CAR T cells and bispecific antibodies for multiple myeloma. He is specifically interested on developing new approaches to prevent relapse in multiple myeloma patients.

Program Name(s)

Academic Clinical Trials Program (ACT)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Limited-duration bispecific antibody therapy for multiple myeloma

Anti-Sox2 immunotherapy to prevent multiple myeloma relapse

The Brigham and Women’s Hospital

My scientific background involves the functional characterization of rare immune cells called dendritic cells in advanced melanoma patients. These cells are master regulators of immunity and are responsible for orchestrating anti-cancer responses driven by effector cells called T cells. My PhD focused on patients who received immunotherapy via antibodies that reinvigorate the immune system, also known as immune checkpoint inhibitors. I collected patient blood samples before and during treatment, and found that a critical subtype of dendritic cell is numerically and functionally impaired in patients who did not respond to immunotherapy compared to those who responded. In my current lab, I leveraged my experience in immune cell research and now study how a novel drug combination can be used to target and kill acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells. This innovative approach targets two biologically important processes within a cell – the protein-making machinery and the control of cell death.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Columbia University Irving Medical Center

My research interests are the identification of genetic alterations responsible for leukemia and lymphoma development and the elucidation of the mechanisms leading to transformation in lymphoid diseases. My academic training and research experience give me an excellent background in multiple biological disciplines including cellular and molecular biology and genetics. I completed my PhD at the INSERM in France where I demonstrated the cooperation between an activating mutation of Jak3 and trisomy 21 in the development of cutaneous T cell lymphoma. I also identified a major cooperative role for the RAS/MAPK signaling pathway in the development of Down syndrome-associated B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Currently, I am a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University, under the mentorship of Dr. Teresa Palomero, and I study the mechanisms of transformation in Peripheral T-cell lymphoma using multidisciplinary approaches from animal models to transcriptomic and epigenomic analysis.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Role of ID2 in mature T-cell lymphoma