Who We Fund

Cleveland Clinic

Paolo Caimi is a physician and clinical investigator at the Cleveland Clinic, where he is also the Associate Bone Marrow Transplant Director for Cellular Therapy. Dr. Caimi completed his medical training at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile in Santiago, Chile. He finished residency at Johns Hopkins University / Sinai Hospital Residency Program in Internal Medicine followed by a hematology and oncology fellowship at Case Western Reserve University. His clinical focus is on the care of patients with lymphoid malignancies and his research is centered around early phase trials, with an emphasis on phase I trials of cellular therapy.

Program Name(s)

Academic Clinical Trials Program (ACT)

Project Title

BAFF-ligand CAR T-cells and pre-apheresis B-cell lymphodepletion for relapsed/refractory CLL

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

The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

Sarah K Tasian, MD PhD is a pediatric oncologist and physician-scientist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine who is interested in development of molecularly-targeted therapeutics and immunotherapies for children with high-risk leukemias. She specialises in the clinical care of children with leukemia and lymphoma, is an internationally-recognized expert in pediatric ALL and AML biology and novel therapeutics, and serves as Chief of the Hematologic Malignancies Program at CHOP, where she holds the Joshua Kahan Endowed Chair in Pediatric Leukemia Research. Her federally-funded translational laboratory research program focuses upon preclinical and early-phase clinical testing of small molecule inhibitors and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell immunotherapies in high-risk genetic subsets of childhood ALL, AML, and JMML. As an experienced clinical trialist, Dr Tasian also has several leadership roles in the Children’s Oncology Group ALL and Myeloid Diseases executive committees and is the clinical trials leader of the international Blood Cancer United PedAL consortium, working collaboratively with colleagues across the world to advance precision medicine therapeutics for children with relapsed/refractory leukemias.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Precision Medicine Inhibitor and Immunotherapy Approaches for High-Risk Childhood Leukemias

University of California, San Francisco

I am a postdoctoral researcher at UCSF, aiming to advance proteomic technologies for target discovery and redefine immunotherapy in blood cancers. In Dr. Arun Wiita's lab, I focus on identifying novel surface antigens in hematological malignancies like AML and multiple myeloma. By combining proteomics with immunotherapy strategies, I aim to bridge scientific discovery and clinical applications, improving outcomes for patients. My PhD in clinical proteomics from IIT-Bombay provided a foundation in biomarker discovery and translational research. I specialize in mass spectrometry-based proteomics, applying quantitative and targeted approaches to explore cancer proteomes and identify "proteoforms" as therapeutic targets. Building on promising data, my research explores surface protein post-translational modifications as a new class of immunotherapy targets, positioning me to become an independent investigator developing breakthrough therapies for blood cancers.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

“Open-Surfaceomics” for Identifying Novel Surface PTMs as Immunotherapy Targets in AML

University of Virginia

I am a trained clinical hematopathologist and physician-scientist who is well versed in both basic and translational studies in hematologic tumors, with a special interest and emphasis in B-cell malignancies: the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms of tumor microenvironment (TME)-induced survival and drug resistance. My long-term goal is to characterize the pathobiology of B-cell lymphomas, especially aggressive B-cell malignancies, and the evolution of resistance to drugs and, more recently, immunotherapy.

Over the last decade, I have developed an active and unique research program for drug screening, chemical proteomics profiling, bulk and scRNAseq, ChIP-seq, ATAC, scATAC, functional pharmacogenomic computational biology, and multiplex immune profiling, and applied it to cell line and primary lymphoma samples to determine the major intrinsic and TME extrinsic molecular determinants governing lymphoma cell response and resistance. By capitalizing a “” opportunity and approach, my long-term goal is to provide major advances in our understanding of the lymphoma biology, develop innovative therapies and exert an immediate favorable impact on treatment for lymphoma patients.

My extensive background in cancer biology and clinical hematology/oncology, with my expertise in novel lymphoma therapies and therapy resistance, make me well-suited to serve as a Principal Investigator on many projects.

Program Name(s)

Mantle Cell Lymphoma Research Initiative

Project Title

Understanding Resistance Mechanism to Enhance CAR-T Immunotherapy for MCL

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Dr. Carrasco earned his MD and PhD degrees at the University of Chile. Motivated by his desire to practice medicine at the highest level, he immigrated to the USA and pursued a residency in anatomic pathology at the Massachusetts General Hospital followed by a fellowship in hematopathology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. In recognition to his research accomplishments in the field of multiple myeloma (MM) during his postdoctoral training he was recruited to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to develop an independent laboratory research program in MM. Dr. Carrasco is current Professor in Pathology at Harvard Medical School. His principal area of excellence is laboratory and clinical investigation focusing on understanding the roles of the Wnt/b-catenin signaling pathway in MM pathogenesis, with the threefold intent of (i) identifying novel therapeutic targets, (ii) developing novel targeted therapies, and (iii) developing animal models for preclinical and clinical intervention.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Developing selective inhibitors of the b-catenin/BCL9 transcriptional complex for myeloma therapy

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Dr. Lane’s laboratory and translational research focuses on the biology of high-risk blood cancers, including acute myeloid leukemia (AML), myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), and blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm (BPDCN). His goal is to identify new therapeutic targets and to understand treatment resistance. He is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, a physician in the Leukemia Program, and a lab investigator in the Division of Hematologic Neoplasia in the Department of Medical Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He is director of the BPDCN Center at Dana-Farber. He is also an associate member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Dr. Lane received a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering from Vanderbilt University, and MD and PhD degrees from Washington University. He completed a residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and fellowships in hematology and medical oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm (BPDCN): understanding disease biology to improve therapy

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Dr Verma has been involved in study of blood cancers such as MDS and AML in the lab and in the clinic. His work has defined the critical role of various signaling pathways (p38 MAP kinase, TGF-beta, smad2/3, IRAK and others) activation in MDS and CMML and this work has directly led to the therapeutic targeting as these pathways in clinical trials in MDS/AML (Nat Cell Bio 2019, JCI 2018, Blood 2015, 2011, JCO 2020, NEJM 2020). The FDA approval of Luspatercept in MDS was also supported by his work in the lab. Dr Verma was on the team to first define stem cell alterations in MDS/AML (Nat Med, 2018; JCI 2014, Blood 2012). Dr Verma has conducted clinical studies in blood cancers (Nat Med, 2022, Cancer Cell 2021, Can Disc, 2020; JAMA Onc 2018) that have studied the effects of COVID-19 and environmental exposures (WTC 911 disaster) on outcomes and pathogenesis. He has also been actively engaged in early phase clinical trials that are investigating novel agents for MDS and AML.

Program Name(s)

CMML Initiative

Project Title

Targeting the inflammasome in CMML

Atrium Health Foundation

I am a physician scientist, specializing in lymphoma therapy. My area of research is focused on the development of new therapeutic approaches in lymphoma by engineering special nanoparticle-based drug-delivery platforms. My team has pioneered a novel high-precision drug delivery system using “click chemistry”, which is composed of high-affinity binding chemical couples. By using this novel technique, we have shown an 8-fold increase in tumor uptake of small molecule drugs compared to the conventional drug delivery, with no discernable toxicity in lymphoma models. My second major area of research involves cell signaling pathways, and their impact on lymphoma cell survival. If this novel targeted therapy platform proves successful, pretargeted nanoparticle approach can be utilized to enhance the potency and precision of small molecule drugs for treatment of relapsed mantle cell lymphoma and transformed follicular lymphoma, which are associated with chemoresistance and poor prognosis.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Next-Generation Targeted Therapy in Mantle Cell Lymphoma and Transformed Follicular Lymphoma

University of Michigan

Dr. Jolanta Grembecka is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology, University of Michigan. Dr. Grembecka’s research is focused on development of small molecule inhibitors of proteins involved in leukemogenesis. Her laboratory has developed the first small molecule inhibitors of the menin-MLL1 interaction as a treatment for acute leukemia, which were advanced to clinical studies in acute myeloid leukemia patients. Her laboratory is also developing new targeted therapies for hematologic cancers by blocking novel epigenetic targets, including ASH1L histone methyltransferase.

Dr. Grembecka has received PhD in Chemistry at Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland. She completed postdoctoral training in drug discovery at the University of Virginia and in 2009 started her independent position at the University of Michigan. Dr. Grembecka is a co-author on over 80 scientific publications and an inventor on 15 patents. She is a Blood Cancer United Scholar and ACS Research Scholar recipient.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Targeted combination therapies for leukemia with NUP98 translocations

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

Institute of Cell Biology (Tumor Research) at the Medical school Essen

Marc Seifert graduated in Biology at the University of Cologne and did his PhD at the Institute of Cell Biology (IFZ) at the University Hospital Essen. Dr. Seiferts research group at the IFZ (Cancer Reseach) exists since 2014 and combines B cell immunology with lymphoma pathogenesis. Dr. Seiferts research aims at decoding the B cell system in healthy people and to determine the critical alterations in risk groups, such as infants and elderly or patients suffering from infections or tumors. This research unravels the B cell immune dynamics throughout life and clarifies which B cell subsets or antibody specificities are beneficial in health and limited in patients. Dr. Seiferts cancer research focusses on Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, Burkitt-Lymphoma and rare entities, such as Hairy Cell Leukemia and Splenic Marginal Zone Lymphoma. Dr. Seifert habilitated in 2017 at the Biological Faculty of the University of Duisburg-Essen in the subjects immunology and cancer research.

Program Name(s)

Special Grants

Project Title

Exploiting metabolic dependencies, tumor plasticity and their consequences for drug response of HCL