Liora Schultz
pediatric research
Liora Schultz, MD
New York, NY
United States
Columbia
I am an Associate Professor in Pediatric Hematology Oncology and Director of the Pediatric Immunotherapy Program at Columbia University. My work focuses on advancing immune therapies (CAR T cells) for children with cancer. I recently transitioned from Stanford University (2013–2025), where I led early first-in-human CAR T cell trials and helped deliver over 250 CAR-therapies to children with advanced cancer. Recognizing a major gap in data sharing, I founded the Pediatric Real-world CAR Consortium, a collaboration of over 50 pediatric oncology centers that enables large-scale data and sample sharing. Through this effort, we have identified predictors of survival and toxicity, modifiable treatment factors that impact survival, and informed international clinical trials. Given the recent approval of CAR T cells, long-term outcomes remain poorly understood. Our next goal is to study survivorship, late effects, and strategies to improve cure rates while reducing toxicity.
Program Name(s)
Dare to Dream
Project Title
Adi Nagler
Bronchiolitis obliterans after transplant
Adi Nagler, PhD
Boston, MA
United States
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Dr. Adi Nagler received her Ph.D. at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 2021, under the mentorship of Prof. Yardena Samuels. There, she spearheaded studies that identified intra-tumoral intracellular bacterial peptides eliciting an immune response by melanoma-infiltrating lymphocytes, suggesting a novel source of antigens within tumors (Kalaora & Nagler Nature 2021). As a postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Catherine Wu’s lab, she is studying the impact of the microbiome on T cell response in bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome (BOS) following allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT). She is applying spatial transcriptomics methodology together with characterization of the immunopeptidome of BOS tissue specimens to define the role of bacterial presented peptides in the pathogenesis of this devastating complication of HCT. Overall, her studies aim is to explore the potential link between T cell antigen specificity to these microbial peptides and initiation and propagation of BOS.
Program Name(s)
Career Development Program
Project Title
Saptadwipa Ganguly, PhD
San Diego, CA
United States
University of California, San Diego
My cousin passed away from glioblastoma before she could fulfill her dream of becoming a lawyer advocating for survivors of domestic abuse. Her loss has kept cancer at the forefront of my mind throughout my academic journey. From earning a master’s degree, where I focused on using natural products to target cancer, and my doctoral work investigating drug resistance mechanisms in cancer, my work has been guided by a deep, personal commitment to better understand and fight this devastating disease.
My ambition is to become an independent scientist leading transformative research aimed at identifying fundamental, targetable vulnerabilities in therapy-resistant cancers. I believe this requires venturing beyond established paradigms and designing strategies that target cancer at its root, through deep scientific insight and creative therapeutic approaches.
Program Name(s)
Career Development Program
Project Title
Impairing Acute Myeloid Leukemia Stem Cells by Disrupting Protein Homeostasis
Courtnee Clough, PhD
Cincinnati, OH
United States
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
Dr. Courtnee Clough is a postdoctoral fellow in the Starczynowski lab at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. She has always been fascinated by the genetic basis of disease – understanding the mechanisms by which genetic mutations can hijack cellular function to promote disease has guided the entirety of my scientific career. Prior to moving to Cincinnati, she received her PhD in Molecular & Cellular Biology from the University of Washington in 2022. Her thesis work focused on defining the disease mechanism(s) of mutant SF3B1 mediated mis-splicing in myelodysplastic neoplasms with ring sideroblasts under the mentorship of Dr. Sergei Doulatov. Her postdoctoral project focuses on the role of dysregulated protein homeostasis in myeloid diseases such as MDS and VEXAS syndrome.
Program Name(s)
Career Development Program
Project Title
John DiPersio
trispecific antibody for AML and MDS
John DiPersio, MD, PhD
St. Louis, MO
United States
Washington University in St. Louis
John F. DiPersio MD, PhD is the Golman Professor of Medicine and Director of The Center for Gene and Cellular Immunotherapy at the Washington University School of Medicine. His research has focused on targeting key elements of the hematopoietic niche for optimal stem cell mobilization and chemosensitization, mitigating GvHD in T cell replete transplants, understanding the genomic alterations in AML, and developing and testing in the clinic novel therapeutics and immuno-therapeutics, including cellular therapies, for the treatment of AML, ALL, T/B-NHL and multiple myeloma. Dr. DiPersio was instrumental in the development and FDA approval of Plerixafor, Motixafortide, and Ruxolitinib. He is the recipient of multiple awards and was past president of the ASTCT and member of the NCI Board of Scientific Counselors. He has authored or co-authored more than 490 publications, is a co-founder of two companies (WUGEN and Magenta) and holds multiple patents.
Program Name(s)
Translational Research Program
Project Title
KT1, a novel NK trispecific antibody for the treatment of AML and MDS
Sahand Hormoz
MPN
Sahand Hormoz, PhD
Boston, MA
United States
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Dr. Hormoz is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School and Department of Data Science at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He obtained his PhD in Applied Physics from Harvard University. His postdoctoral studies were conducted jointly as a theorist at the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics (UCSB), and as an experimentalist at Caltech. Hormoz lab’s mission is to control biological systems to understand life and cure disease such as cancer. His lab develops new technologies for recording and measuring the molecular states of individual cells and computational frameworks for interpreting the large data sets that these measurements generate. Dr. Hormoz’s research on blood cancers has focused on reconstructing the history of cancer in individual patients to understand when cancer first occurs and how cancer cells expand in each patient.
Program Name(s)
Discovery
Project Title
Shannon Maude
Immunotherapy for ALL
Shannon Maude, MD PhD
Philadelphia, PA
United States
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
Alexandra Stevens
childhood AML
Alexandra Stevens, MD
Houston, TX
United States
Baylor College of Medicine
I was born in New York City to two hard-working and driven parents who encouraged me to pursue my passions and not back down from a challenge. I determined I loved science in high school and earned a Westinghouse Science Talent Search award for work done on vaccine development. In college, at Duke University, I decided to pursue medical school when a friend had a relapse of her cancer. Medical school and Pediatrics Residency was in NYC at Columbia University and Mount Sinai respectively where my passion for caring for children with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) was solidified. For Fellowship I moved my family to Texas to pursue pediatric oncology training at Texas Children’s Hospital/Baylor College of Medicine and continued on to get my Ph.D. in Clinical Investigation. The resources at TCH/BCM have allowed me to become an outstanding clinician, a recognized educator, and to pursue my goal of improving outcomes for the next generation of children to be diagnosed with AML.
Program Name(s)
Dare to Dream
Project Title
Pediatric AML PDX Models and Drug Testing-Gateway to Novel PedAL Trials
Inhye Ahn
CLL
Inhye Ahn, MD
Boston, MA
United States
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
I am an Assistant Professor at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) specializing in clinical investigations of CLL. Until 2021, I served as PI of investigator-sponsored studies at the NIH, including two trials specifically designed for CLL patients with high-risk genomic features. These efforts provided the largest and longest follow-up experience available for TP53 aberrant CLL treated with ibrutinib and revealed BTK mutations leading to treatment resistance. My immediate research goal is to apply the skills and knowledge learned from the previous work to investigate mechanisms of drug resistance emerging after targeted combination therapy. I have established collaboration with other investigators and am prospectively collecting research samples from a phase 2 study of zanubrutinib and venetoclax (NCT05168930). I envision data from the study will establish genomic markers as a decision-making tool that informs the selection of treatment regimens and modification of treatment duration.
Program Name(s)
Career Development Program
Project Title
Clinical and molecular determinants of CLL eradication with targeted combination therapy
Peter van Galen, PhD
Boston, MA
United States
The Brigham & Women's Hospital
Dr. Peter van Galen is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he develops improved treatments for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and related blood disorders. His research focuses on how blood stem cells age and how AML develops and progresses. His laboratory identifies unique properties of leukemia cells, such as how they survive stress and produce new proteins—processes that may reveal new ways to selectively eliminate AML cells. His team has also developed technologies to track single cancer cells over the course of disease, including rare cells that remain after treatment. These studies can uncover proteins that may be targeted to eradicate persistent leukemia cells. In addition to his research, Dr. Van Galen is committed to creating a supportive lab environment and mentoring trainees, with the goal of advancing science and improving patient care.
Program Name(s)
Career Development Program
Project Title
Identification of leukemia cell-specific vulnerabilities by tracking disease evolution
Caron Jacobson
lymphoma and immunotherapy
Caron Jacobson, MD
Boston, MA
United States
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
I graduated from Columbia College of Physicians & Surgeons, where I stayed for Internal Medicine residency training/chief residency before moving to Boston for fellowship training in hematology/oncology at Dana-Farber/Mass General Cancer Center. I stayed on as faculty in the lymphoma program at Dana-Farber and am now an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. My research interests are in the clinical and translational study of immunotherapies for lymphoma, with a particular interest in cellular immunotherapies. I also serve as the Medical Director of the Immune Effector Cell Therapy program at Dana-Farber, which houses our commercial and research cell therapy programs across the Institute. I am the principal investigator of industry-sponsored and investigator-initiated clinical trials involving cellular therapies for lymphoma, and lead retrospective and translational studies to identify mechanisms of response and resistance to these therapies.
Program Name(s)
Career Development Program
Project Title
Stavroula Kousteni, PhD
New York, NY
United States
Columbia University Medical Center
Dr Kousteni is the Edward P. Evans Chair in MDS Research, Vice-Chair and Professor in Physiology and Cellular Biophysics and the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Director of the Edward P. Evans Center for MDS at Columbia University. Her laboratory has been pioneering the uncovering of mechanisms through which the bone marrow niche regulates hematopoietic stem cell fate with aging and in the development of Myelodysplasia (MDS) and Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). To achieve these goals, she has established an extensive network of collaborators across different disciplines and Institutions and with the Industry; and built a team with expertise in genetically engineered mouse models of MDS and AML, genomics, and experimental therapeutics.
Program Name(s)
Translational Research Program
Project Title
Targeting a niche-initiated proinflammatory driver to prevent and treat MDS and AML