Research We Fund

Blood cancers called myeloproliferative neoplasms occur when one of the blood stem cells picks up a mutation. Some patients stay in the chronic phase of the disease for years whereas others rapidly progress with poor outcome. We recently measured when the cancer mutation first occurs and the rate of expansion of the cancer cells in individual patients. We will develop a method that uses the history of disease in each patient to identify those that are at risk of progression.

We recently identified a pervasive, pathogenically relevant mutational mechanism that targets super-enhancers (SE) in DLBCL, leading to target gene deregulation. Here we will dissect the mechanistic role of 3 highly recurrent hotspots in the BCL6, BTG2 and CXCR4 SEs in driving lymphomagenesis and tumor dependency in vitro and in vivo using novel mouse models. These studies will significantly transform our understanding of DLBCL and identify novel therapeutic targets.

Based on our preliminary data, we hypothesize that IRAK4 inhibition leads to LSPC reprogramming in MDS and AML. Aim 1 will evaluate the mechanism by which IRAK4 inhibition leads to LSPC reprogramming in cell lines, mice, and PDX samples. Aim 2 will concentrate on understanding of how IRAK4 inhibition creates synthetic lethal dependencies with the CELMoD CC-885 and how neosubstrates of CC-885 mediate the synergy upon IRAK4 inhibition in leukemic cells.

Our research focuses on the preclinical evaluation of new targeted therapies for high-risk subtypes of childhood AML. We are deploying screening approaches to delete each gene, one-by-one, to identify genes whose deletion leads to death of the leukemia cells. We will evaluate drugs developed against these targets in state-of-the-art models of pediatric AML. Our goal is to translate the most promising findings to clinical trials for children with these very poor outcome subsets of AML.