Who We Fund

Duke University Medical Center

Fahmin Basher, MD, PhD completed her bachelor’s degrees in chemical engineering and biological sciences at the University of South Carolina. She then went on to pursue a combined MD/PhD in cancer immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina in the Medical Scientist Training Program under the mentorship of Jennifer Wu, PhD. She completed her internal medicine residency training at the University of Miami prior to transitioning to Duke University for her hematology/medical oncology fellowship training. During her fellowship, she served as chief fellow and was supported by the Duke Hematology and Transfusion Medicine T32 training grant. Her clinical and research interests include a focus in translational immunology, particularly the treatment of hematologic malignancies and optimization of therapeutic approaches and complications after stem cell transplantation and cellular therapy. She is currently being mentored by Stefanie Sarantopoulos, MD, PhD.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

The Role of the DNA Sensor AIM2 in B Cell Fate and Function After HCT

MD Anderson Cancer Center

Dr. Meng Li is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Health Services Research at the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center and a nonresident fellow at the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics at the University of Southern California. Dr. Li completed her PhD in Pharmaceutical Outcomes Research and Policy at University of Washington, where co-PI, Dr. Flowers also completed his MS. Dr. Li’s research uses various data sources including population-based cancer registries, nationwide administrative claims databases, national survey data, and data from clinical trials and observational series to examine disease burden, factors that influence health care utilization, the effect of health care utilization on health outcomes, and the cost-sharing burden of prescription drugs. In particular, Her research has used Optum and SEER-Medicare data to examine disparity in initiation of immunotherapies among lung cancer and melanoma patients, the association between spending on several types of treatment and outcomes in breast cancer, and catastrophic spending among cancer patients on oral targeted anticancer medicines. Dr. Li has also developed methods to quantify novel elements of value for medical technologies in economic evaluations, which has important implications on the practice of value assessment. She meets regularly and collaborates with Drs. Shih and Flowers. Dr. Li’s research work has been published in top clinical, health economics, and health policy journals.

Program Name(s)

Equity in Access

Project Title

Investigating the Impact of Insurance Coverage on Access to Care and Outcomes among Lymphoma Patients

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Xiaodi Wu, MD, PhD, is an Instructor of Medicine at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC). Having completed his fellowship training in medical oncology at MSKCC, he is working to establish a career as a physician–scientist who treats patients with leukemia or other blood cancers while, in the laboratory, studying how blood cancers develop out of previously healthy bone marrow due to mutations in a class of proteins called transcription factors. The goal of his work is to identify specific molecular pathways that can be targeted in order to help patients with these conditions.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

CEBPA mutations in the pathogenesis of leukemia

Beckman Research Institute of the City of Hope

I am a physician employed at the University of Michigan who specializes in the management of patients with a very specific blood cancer called lymphoma. The term "Lymphoma" describes a collection (subtypes) of tumors that originate from a blood cell called a lymphocyte. The different subtypes can have very different presentations and outcomes. Treatment for lymphoma differs from most other cancers in that chemotherapy and not surgery is essential. As part of my work at the university I conduct research in lymphoma. My research involves evaluating new drugs and drug combinations in patients with lymphoma as part of clinical trials. Clinical trials offer treatments for patients who have no other viable options and/or gives patients an opportunity to receive promising drugs that would otherwise not be available. As part of the clinical trials, I use special tests to evaluate for reasons why the drugs do or don't work. This part of the research is important to allow for me to better select patients for certain treatments and to better understanding of what makes lymphoma cells survive.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Stratified treatment of newly diagnosed MCL based on the presence or absence of high risk features utilizing non-cytotoxic agents.

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

Columbia University Medical Center

Dr. Doulatov is an Associate Professor at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. His laboratory investigates how normal hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) transform into blood cancers. As an undergraduate at UCLA with Dr. Jeff Miller, he discovered a new class of retroelements. As a Ph.D. student with Dr. John Dick at the University of Toronto, he helped establish the “roadmap” of the human HSC and progenitor hierarchy. As a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. George Daley at Harvard, he identified methods to promote HSC development from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). These advances have enabled the use of iPSCs as a platform for disease modeling and drug screens, leading to the discovery of a drug for inherited anemia. The Doulatov laboratory is using human iPSCs and HSCs to discover how oncogenic mutations cooperate to transform normal stem cells into leukemias. His long-term goal is to develop treatments that target malignant stem cells leading to lasting remissions for patients.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Modeling and targeting leukemic transformation of human hematopoietic stem cells

MD Anderson Cancer Center

Michael Wang, MD, is Professor of Lymphoma and Myeloma at MD Anderson Cancer Center where he established the Mantle Cell Lymphoma Program of Excellence, the world’s only program dedicated exclusively to MCL research and treatment. He led trials resulting in 3 FDA approvals for MCL treatment. He leads a large lab focusing on overcoming resistance to MCL therapies and developing new ones. His detailed studies of tissue from patients with MCL has been instrumental in setting the stage for this application. Jia Zhou, PhD, is Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Apart from academia, he worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 7 years. His primary research interest is drug discovery and the development of novel small-molecule therapeutics for cancers and other diseases. He has established a fruitful collaboration with Dr. Wang and his lab and has great experience in leading both the chemical and pharmacological aspects of drug development.

Program Name(s)

Mantle Cell Lymphoma Research Initiative

Project Title

Development of novel BTK-MALT1 dual inhibitors to treat MCL

The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

I am an NIH-funded physician scientist with a scientific and clinical focus on cutaneous lymphomas. We have utilized high-dimensional genomic, epigenetic, and immunological approaches to elucidate the immunobiology of multiple cutaneous T and B cell lymphomas. We utilize a combination of human and mouse models as well as a number of unbiased approaches including whole genome sequencing, bulk and single cell RNA and ATAC-Seq, epigenetic assays such as ATAC-Seq, CUT&RUN, and HiCHIP, as well as spectral flow and multimodal CITE-Seq. These efforts have led to manuscripts published in Nature, Nature Cancer, Cancer Discovery, and Blood. These efforts have been funded by an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the Damon Runyon Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and most recently the Mark Foundation for Cancer Research.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Identification of novel therapeutic strategies for aggressive subtypes of CTCL

University of California, San Diego

Dr. Leslie Crews is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at UCSD with a passion for stem cell biology and translational cancer research. She received her bachelor’s degree from UCLA and a PhD in Molecular Pathology from UCSD. During her postdoctoral training in leukemia and myeloma research, Dr. Crews and her collaborators discovered that the interferon-responsive RNA editing gene ADAR1 is hyper-activated in myeloma and that this molecule promotes disease progression and drug resistance by activating stem cell regulatory pathways. Since starting her independent laboratory in 2017 as a member of the Division of Regenerative Medicine and the Moores Cancer Center, the primary focus of the Crews Laboratory has been on multiple myeloma translational research. Her ongoing work aims to delve deeper into the molecular mechanisms of myeloma initiation and progression, with the goal of identifying novel, more selective therapies to treat individuals with this incurable cancer.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Inflammation-responsive mechanisms of malignant stem cell generation and eradication in multiple myeloma

Weill Cornell Medicine

John P. Leonard, MD, is the Richard T. Silver Distinguished Professor of Hematology and Medical Oncology and Senior Associate Dean for Innovation and Initiatives at Weill Cornell Medicine. He is Executive Vice Chairman of the Weill Department of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and New York-Presbyterian Hospital.  Dr. Leonard’s research has been published in numerous medical journals, and he has served as a member of the editorial boards of Blood and the Journal of Clinical Oncology, leading international journals in these fields. He is Chair of the Lymphoma Committee of the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology, a multicenter cooperative group and key component of the National Cancer Institute’s National Clinical Trials Network. Dr. Leonard’s primary research interest is in the development of novel therapeutic strategies for the treatment of lymphoma and related hematologic malignancies, and he has lectured at major international meetings on these topics. He also has studied prognostic, imaging and survivorship issues for lymphoma patients.

Program Name(s)

IMPACT

Project Title

BRIDGE (Blood cancer Research Initiative Developing Greater Engagement) with community patients

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

I am the Edward P. Evans Chair in MDS at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) where I also serve as Chair of the Molecular Pharmacology Program. My clinical areas of expertise are in myeloid malignancies, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and rare forms of leukemias (hairy cell leukemia, CMML, BPDCN, and histiocytoses). 

Over the last ten years, my laboratory has been focused on understanding alterations in the process of RNA splicing in cancer. Motivated by the discovery of high frequency mutations in the splicing machinery in leukemias and MDS, my lab’s work has led to the development of several therapeutic approaches for these genetic subtypes of cancer. I have received the Seldin-Smith Award for Pioneering Research from the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the Dameshek Prize from the American Society of Hematology, and the Pershing Square Sohn Prize for Young Investigators in Cancer Research.

Program Name(s)

Discovery

Project Title

TCR T cells for the treatment of SRSF2 mutant myeloid neoplasms

Yale University

The first-generation in his family to attend college, Dr. Girardi is the Evans Professor of Dermatology and Vice Chair of Faculty Development & Scientific Innovation at the Yale School of Medicine. The previous Co-Director of the Immunology and Immunotherapy Program for the Yale Cancer Center, Dr. Girardi has committed his career as a physician-scientist to the care of lymphoma patients and the discovery of new treatments. Dr. Girardi has led a highly collaborative research program funded by the National Cancer Institute for 20+ years investigating lymphoma and immunology, including major findings on the genetics, therapeutics development, and formulation of treatment guidelines through the U.S. Cutaneous Lymphoma Consortium and International Society of Cutaneous Lymphoma. Dr. Girardi also serve on the Leadership Council for Advancing Innovation in Dermatology and has been elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Personalized Anti-TCRVbeta2 therapeutic antibody and ADC for T Cell Leukemias and Lymphomas