Who We Fund

University of Florida

I am a postdoctoral research trainee at the University of Florida Health Cancer Center (UFHCC). I received a Ph.D. in Comparative Biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. My graduate research focused on the use of gene editing functional screens to study a variety of cellular processes including nutrient uptake and response to toxic substances. For my postdoctoral training, I decided to study hematologic malignancies. I joined the Laboratory of Dr. Jonathan Licht at UFHCC where I started to investigate the molecular and epigenetic mechanisms underlying pathogenesis of Multiple Myeloma (MM), a cancer of plasma cells that remains incurable. My current research focuses on identification of vulnerabilities associated with recurrent genetic lesions in MM. As most MM patients ultimately relapse by developing resistance to existing therapies, the ultimate goal of my work is to identify novel therapeutic targets to reverse drug tolerance and improve therapeutic outcomes.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Investigating the Role of Adenylate Kinase 2 in Multiple Myeloma

Johns Hopkins University

As a physician-scientist in the Division of Hematologic Malignancies at the Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, Dr. Dalton has a clinical specialty in myeloid leukemias and a research laboratory that focuses on the study of DNA mutations that drive those leukemias. In particular, he is working to better understand DNA mutations in the spliceosome, which occur in many patients with MDS and AML and are currently difficult to treat. He uses bone marrow and blood samples generously donated by patients, together with cell ‘models’ that he genetically engineers in the lab, to understand what these DNA mutations do and how they might be targeted with new treatments. His work has led to identification of vulnerabilities in cells containing these mutations that he aims to translate into novel therapeutic approaches in MDS and AML.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Therapeutic modulation of serine availability for SF3B1-mutant myeloid malignancies

Texas A&M Institute of Biosciences and Technology

Dr. Yubin Zhou is a professor of Translational Cancer Research at the Texas A&M University Institute of Biosciences and Technology. He is interested in pioneering chemical and synthetic biology approaches to interrogate tumorigenesis, and developing targeted therapeutics for hematological malignancies. Dr. Zhou received his medical training/internship in internal medicine (1998-2003), and earned his Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry/Virology (2008) from Georgia State University. He thereafter received his postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School (2008-2010) and then worked as an instructor at La Jolla Institute for Immunology/UCSD (2010-2012). Dr. Zhou was the recipient of the LLS Fellow Award, Special Fellow Award, the TAMU Research Excellence Award, the ACS Research Scholar Award, and the Presidential Impact Fellow, Protégé member the Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science & Technology, and elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Development of mutant GTPase-specific degraders for peripheral T cell lymphoma treatment

Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University

Dr. Majeti is Professor of Medicine, Chief of the Division of Hematology, and Member of the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He is a board-certified hematologist. While at Stanford, he completed post-doctoral training in the laboratory of Irving Weissman, MD, where he investigated acute myeloid leukemia (AML) stem cells and therapeutic targeting with anti-CD47 antibodies. Dr. Majeti directs an active NIH-funded laboratory that focuses on the molecular characterization and therapeutic targeting of leukemia stem cells in human hematologic disorders, particularly AML, and has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles.

Program Name(s)

Discovery

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Clonal Evolution of Pre-Leukemic Hematopoietic Stem Cells in Human Myeloid Malignancies

Personalized Metabolic Targeting of Epigenetic AML Mutations Through the Alpha-Ketoglutarate Pathway

TAP Partner

Immune-Onc is a private, clinical-stage cancer immunotherapy company dedicated to the discovery and development of novel myeloid checkpoint inhibitors for cancer patients. The company aims to translate unique scientific insights in myeloid cell biology and immune inhibitory receptors to discover and develop first-in-class biotherapeutics that reverse immune suppression in the tumor microenvironment. Immune-Onc has a differentiated pipeline with a current focus on targeting the Leukocyte Immunoglobulin-Like Receptor subfamily B (LILRB) of myeloid checkpoints. Immune-Onc’s focused platform approach has led to the development of several promising therapeutics across various stages of development.

Program Name(s)

Therapy Acceleration Program

Project Title

A phase 1 expansion study of IO-202, an antibody targeting LILRB4, in combination with azacitidine in patients with monocytic differentiation AML and CMML

Emory University

Dr. Ji is a health services researcher with extensive experience leveraging insurance payer data to study policy issues pertaining to U.S. healthcare systems, with an emphasis on Medicaid. Her research strives to understand the effect of Medicaid policies on healthcare access and outcomes for vulnerable youth and adults. She recently extended this experience to data on pediatric and adolescent/young adult (AYA) cancer survivorship. She co-leads (with Dr. Sharon Castellino) NCI 1R03CA259665-01 to investigate how the Affordable Care Act affects treatment timeliness and survival in AYAs with cancer. She leads a Medicaid initiative within the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study, where she oversees an ongoing linkage of administrative Medicaid data to a nationwide cohort of cancer survivors. She also leads a Junior Faculty Focused Award evaluating Medicaid coverage continuity for pediatric cancer survivors in a single institution.

Program Name(s)

Equity in Access

Project Title

Impact of Health Insurance on Mortality for Children and AYAs Newly Diagnosed with a Blood Cancer: A Population-Based Multistate Evaluation

The University of Melbourne

Dr. Lev Kats is head of the Targeted Therapeutics Laboratory at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. He completed his PhD at Monash University and postdoctoral training at Beth Israel Deaconess Centre/Harvard Medical School. Dr. Kats has made major contributions in the areas of targeted therapies, epigenetics and hematological malignancies including through discovery of important functions of cancer promoting genes and the characterization of the molecular mechanisms of anti-leukemic drugs. His laboratory uses model systems, functional and molecular genomics approaches to develop and test new therapeutic strategies for aggressive blood cancers.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Targeting DCAF1 as a novel treatment strategy for therapy resistant multiple myeloma

Stanford University

Dr. Mark Hamilton is a native of Austin Texas. His undergraduate education was at Austin College in Sherman, Texas, where he graduated summa cum laude with majors in biology and English literature and minors in chemistry and anthropology. Mark learned a love for science and medicine in college leading to the pursuit of a combined MD/PhD at Baylor College of Medicine. For his PhD work, Mark worked in The Cancer Genome Atlas project using genomic sequencing technologies to understand how microRNAs function in cancer. Mark subsequently joined Stanford’s Translational Investigator Program which combines residency in Internal Medicine and fellowship in Hematology and Oncology. Mark’s career focus is on treating leukemia and lymphoma using chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies. He is especially interested in using genomic sequencing technologies to understand how CAR T-cells propagate in patients and interact with the tumor to kill cancer.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Cell-free DNA analysis of persistent CAR T-cell populations in humans

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

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Eirini Papapetrou, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Oncological Sciences, Hematology and Medical Oncology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr Papapetrou’s research program seeks to uncover new disease mechanisms and therapeutic targets for myeloid neoplasms. Dr Papapetrou pioneered the development of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) models of myeloid malignancies. Her laboratory leverages genetically faithful isogenic iPSC models of myeloid malignancies generated through patient cell reprogramming and precise CRISPR-mediated gene editing and exploits the unique capabilities they offer towards target discovery and validation through mechanistic interrogation, genetic and chemical screens, and functional studies. Dr. Papapetrou is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy Outstanding New investigator Award, Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award, Pershing Square Sohn Prize and is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Studying the biology and therapeutic vulnerabilities of leukemia stem cells using AML-iPSCs

Columbia University Medical Center

Dr. Teresa Palomero is a molecular and cellular biologist. She is a Professor at Columbia University in the Institute for Cancer Genetics. Her laboratory focuses on the identification of molecular alterations responsible for the development of Peripheral T-cell lymphomas, a heterogeneous group of very aggressive lymphoid malignances. Dr. Palomero has been a pioneer in the genomic analysis of Peripheral T-cell lymphoma cases and in the development of mouse models for better understanding the evolution of the disease and test novel therapeutic agents. Her extensive work on hematologic malignancies has led to the identification of key genomic alterations in leukemia and lymphoma including some currently used for molecular diagnosis.

Dr. Palomero scientific work has been published in top tier scientific journals including Nature Genetics, Nature Medicine and Cancer Cell, among others.

Program Name(s)

Discovery

Project Title

Targeting Microenvironment Determinants in Peripheral T-cell Lymphoma

The University of Melbourne

Professor Dawson is the Associate Director for Research Translation, a Program Head in Laboratory Research and a Consultant Haematologist at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. His research interest is studying the role of epigenetic regulators in the initiation, maintenance and progression of cancer. His current research spans cell and molecular biology, functional genomics, cancer immunology, chemical biology and clinical translation. He is the Sir Edward Dunlop Fellow for the Cancer Council of Victoria and a HHMI International Research Scholar. In recognition of his research achievements, he has been elected to the Australian Academy of Science, the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and an EMBO member. He has received several prestigious awards including the McCulloch & Till Award from the International Society of Experimental Haematology, the Jacques Miller Medal from the Australian Academy of Science and the Prime Minister’s Prize as Life Scientist in 2020.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Understanding molecular determinants of immune evasion to CAR-T cells at single clone resolution