Faron Pharmaceuticals
immunotherapy, MDS
Faron Pharmaceuticals
Turku,
Finland
TAP Partner
Faron is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on building the future of immunotherapy by harnessing the power of the immune system to tackle cancer and inflammation. The precision immunotherapy in clinical development has the potential to provide permanent immune stimulation for difficult-to-treat cancers through targeting myeloid function.
Program Name(s)
Therapy Acceleration Program
Project Title
Juan Alderuccio, MD
Miami, FL
United States
University of Miami
Dr. Alderuccio is the Clinical Research Site Disease Group Leader in the Lymphoma Section at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Dr. Alderuccio’s institutional obligations include caring for patients with lymphoma, conducting clinical and translational research, mentoring junior faculty, and overseeing the clinical trial operations of more than 30 studies. He conducts clinical trials using novel therapeutics aiming to improve outcomes in patients with aggressive lymphoma. His translational research focuses on developing decision-making models that integrate imaging, biomarkers, and clinical data using machine learning approaches. Consequently, he is an author of more than 75 peer-reviewed manuscripts and has communicated his studies at national and international meetings. Dr. Alderuccio is also a member of the American Society of Hematology, where he serves on the Communications and Educational Affairs Committees.
Program Name(s)
Career Development Program
Project Title
Novel strategies toward improving outcomes in large B-cell lymphoma
Terry Fry
AML immunotherapy
Terry Fry, MD
Aurora, CO
United States
University of Colorado Denver, Anschutz Medical Campus
Terry Fry, MD, is a professor of pediatrics, hematology and immunology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He is the chair of the Gates Institute Advisory Board and holds the Charles C. Gates Endowed Chair in Regenerative Medicine. He arrived at Colorado in 2018 after serving as head of the Hematologic Malignancies Section in the Pediatric Oncology Branch at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where he led efforts in cellular immunotherapy for pediatric leukemia. Prior to the NIH, Dr. Fry was chief of Blood and Marrow Transplantation at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. His research focuses on the preclinical and clinical development of chimeric antigen receptor T cells for pediatric cancers. He serves on the Committee for Scientific Affairs for the American Society of Hematology, is vice chair for biology in the Cellular Therapy Committee of the Children’s Oncology Group, and was elected into the American Society for Clinical Investigation.
Program Name(s)
Academic Clinical Trials Program (ACT)
Project Title
A phase 1 study of anti-CD64 CAR T cells in patients with venetoclax-refractory myeloid neoplasms
Alba Rodriguez-Meira, PhD
Boston, MA
United States
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
I was an endlessly curious child who wanted to become a scientist. But it was my own experience as a teenager in a Pediatric Hospital Unit that shaped my scientific passion, where I became friends with children affected by leukemia. I was shocked by the terrible implications of this disease and became determined to design new therapies to fight it.
Inspired by this experience, I studied cancer biology at top institutions across Europe and the US. I wanted to understand how leukemia originated, and how it evolved to become an aggressive and hard-to-treat disease.
As a PhD student at the University of Oxford, I developed new sequencing technologies to understand how leukemia arises and evolves inside each individual cell. My deep passion for leukemia research later brought me to Dana Farber Cancer Institute, where I am currently studying the earliest molecular changes that predispose to leukemia, aiming to prevent leukemia from developing in the first place.
Project Title
Soheil Meshinchi
pediatric AML
Soheil Meshinchi, MD, PhD
Seattle, WA
United States
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Dr. Soheil Meshinchi is a physician scientist and a Full Member at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, as well as Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine. With over 25 years of experience in AML biology, he chairs the COG Myeloid Disease Biology Committee and the NCI designated Hematopoietic Integrated Science Center (HM-ITSC) to help translate laboratory discoveries into clinical practice. He leads the novel target and biomarker discovery for the LLS Children’s Initiative and the Pediatric Acute Leukemia (PedAL) efforts. As the director of NCI TARGET AML initiative and the Target Pediatric AML (TpAML), , he has led multi-omic studies of over 3000 children and young adults; Studies including Whole Genome Sequencing, Transcriptome sequencing, miRNA sequencing, Methylation profiling as well as the ongoing long read RNA sequencing to fully define splice isoforms in normal and malignant hematopoiesis.
Program Name(s)
Academic Clinical Trials Program (ACT)
Specialized Center of Research Program
Project Title
Multi-modal Immunotherapeutic Targeting of AML-restricted Targets in Infants and Children
First in Human Mesothelin-Directed Artemis CART in Childhood AML
Ryvu Therapeutics
AML, MDS
Ryvu Therapeutics
Krakow,
Poland
TAP Partner
Ryvu Therapeutics is a clinical-stage drug discovery and development company focusing on novel small molecule therapies that address emerging targets in oncology using a proprietary discovery engine platform.
Program Name(s)
Therapy Acceleration Program
Project Title
Tak Mak
Immunotherapy
Tak Mak, PhD
Toronto, ON
Canada
Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network
Tak W. Mak is an international leader in cancer and immunology research. He is best known for his cloning of the human T cell receptor in 1984, which led to the CAR-T therapies now approved for leukemias/lymphomas. His lab also generated numerous genetically modified mouse strains to identify key factors in immune disorders and cancers. His group’s demonstration that CTLA4 negatively regulates T cell activation paved the way for checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy. Most recently, his team showed that T and B cells produce acetylcholine in a manner influencing tumorigenesis and autoimmunity. On the biotech front, Dr. Mak co-founded Agios Pharmaceuticals, which produced two IDH inhibitors that are now FDA-approved for treatment of AML. The Mak team has also developed two novel agents targeting aneuploid cancer cells. These agents have shown promise in phase 2 clinical trials. Dr. Mak has published >950 papers, holds 20 patents, and has received over 35 national and international awards.
Program Name(s)
Specialized Center of Research Program
Project Title
The Immune Niche in the Development of Hematological Malignancies and Implications for Novel Therapy
Hayden Bell, PhD
Bosto, MA
United States
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Hayden Bell is a research fellow in Dr. Andrew Lane’s lab at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a research fellow at Harvard Medical School. He is focusing on the application of novel research techniques to discover cures for blood cancers. In his PhD research, he identified novel drug combinations for the treatment of high-risk and relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). He also developed a cutting-edge pipeline allowing large-scale drug screening of primary leukemias using machine learning which is helping other researchers in the battle against leukemias. Now, Hayden is applying his leukemia biology expertise to other high-risk blood cancers including acute myeloid leukemia (AML). He is specifically focused upon sex-biased drivers and dependencies in myeloid disease, and how these might afford new opportunities for novel treatments.
Program Name(s)
Career Development Program
Project Title
Constantine Mitsiades
CAR-T and CAR-NK immunotherapies
Constantine Mitsiades, MD, PhD
Boston, MA
United States
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Constantine Mitsiades is Associate Professor of Medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School; Associate Member of the Broad Institute; and Vice-Chair of Myeloma Committee, Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology. His studies focus on understanding the mechanisms through which myeloma or other blood cancers develop persistence/resistance to pharmacological or immune therapies; and delineating the therapeutic vulnerabilities of these cells. His studies have applied functional genomics (e.g., CRISPR) methods to define these resistance mechanisms and define the dependencies that preferentially drive myeloma cells, including several collaborative studies with the lab of the co-PI Dr Lawrence Boise.
Program Name(s)
Translational Research Program
Project Title
“Functional precision medicine” to personalize Ras inhibitor-based combination therapies in myeloma
Mignon Loh, MD
Seattle, WA
United States
Seattle Children's Hospital
Dr. Loh is a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital. She is the Division Head of Hematology, Oncology, Bone marrow transplant, and Cellular therapies and also directs the Ben Towne Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Disorder Research. Over her 30-year career, Dr. Loh has studied primary patient samples in the laboratory to make seminal observations about leukemia pathogenesis that informs accurate molecular diagnoses, improves risk stratification, and identifies novel therapeutic approaches. These studies have been performed in juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia and acute lymphoblastic leukemia, leading to innovative clinical trials. Her strength as a collaborator and leader also allows her to capitalize on the expertise and strengths of individual scientists to create highly productive teams that produce cutting edge results, and this proposal will continue that trajectory with Dr. Price’s expertise.
Program Name(s)
Translational Research Program
Project Title
Affinity-Tuned T-Cell Engagers for Dual Targeting of B-Myeloid Mixed Phenotype Acute Leukemia
Dren Bio
immunotherapy, LGLL, cytotoxic lymphomas
Dren Bio
Foster City, CA
United States
TAP Partner
Dren Bio is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing therapeutic antibodies for the treatment of cancer, autoimmune and other serious diseases. Dren Bio’s pipeline encompasses two distinct programs, the first focusing on the engineering of antibodies with enhanced antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (“ADCC”) capabilities and the second revolving around its proprietary Targeted Myeloid Engager and Phagocytosis Platform.
Program Name(s)
Therapy Acceleration Program
Project Title
A phase 1 study of DR-0201, a bispecific myeloid engager, in patients with B-NHL
Adam Olszewski
Follicular and marginal zone lymphoma
Adam Olszewski, MD
Providence, RI
United States
Rhode Island Hospital
Adam Olszewski, MD is a hematologist and oncologist specializing in the treatment of lymphomas. He graduated from the Medical University of Warsaw, Poland, and completed his postgraduate training at Roosevelt Hospital (Mount Sinai West) in New York, NY. His is currently Associate Professor of Medicine at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and conducts clinical research for patients with Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphomas at the Lifespan Cancer Institute at Rhode Island Hospital, Providence, RI. He is a Research Scholar of the American Cancer Society who has also been supported by awards from the American Society of Hematology, the National Institutes of Health, and the Rhode Island Foundation. Dr. Olszewski has authored over 100 scientific publications. His current research is focused on developing immunotherapies and molecularly targeted approaches for the treatment of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, as well as genomic correlates of responsiveness to these therapies.
Program Name(s)
Career Development Program