Who We Fund

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Dr. Urvi Shah is an Assistant Attending in the Myeloma Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She is board certified in Internal Medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology and received a Master of Science degree in Clinical and Translational Cancer Research. Her research interests include modifiable risk factors (diet, metabolism, microbiome) in cancer. She completed the first pilot nutrition trial in plasma cell disorders to date (NUTRIVENTION) and has 3 other dietary trials enrolling. Dr. Shah has been supported by career development awards (National Cancer Institute [NCI] K12, International Myeloma Society and American Society of Hematology [ASH] Scholar) and research awards (ASH CRTI, ECOG ACRIN Young Investigator Translational Research, Henry Moses, Celgene Future Leaders in Hematology, NCI Early Investigator Advancement Program and Clinical Cancer Research Early Career). She has published papers in prominent journals and has been an invited speaker and chair.

Program Name(s)

Academic Clinical Trials Program (ACT)

Project Title

A Decentralized Randomized High-Fiber Dietary Trial to Improve Outcomes in Newly Diagnosed Myeloma

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Eugenio Morelli, MD, is an Instructor in Medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Morelli's research interest is to decode the key oncogenic features of noncoding RNAs (ncRNA) to inform ncRNA-based therapies in multiple myeloma (MM). Dr. Morelli earned his MD degree magna cum laude in 2011 at the Magna Graecia University of Catanzaro (Catanzaro, Italy) and from 2012 to 2017 completed a clinical/research fellowship in Medical Oncology at the same Institution. In 2017, Dr. Morelli joined the Nikhil C Munshi Lab at the Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School (Boston, MA, USA), where he has been working since then. Dr. Morelli has a demonstrated record of accomplished and productive research projects. In recognition of his research prowess, Dr. Morelli was awarded the International Myeloma Foundation (IMF) Brian D Novis Award and the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center SPORE in Multiple Myeloma Career Enhancement Award.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Defining the Biologic and Therapeutic Significance of the Novel Long Noncoding RNA MYND in Multiple Myeloma

Houston Methodist Research Institute

I am a translational tumor immunologist. I have 30 years of experience as a well-funded and published researcher and am one of the leading investigators in the fields of tumor immunology in myeloma and other cancers. My laboratory has been working on: (1) characterizing myeloma- and tumor-specific T cells and their subsets and examining their functions, (2) identifying novel myeloma-associated antigens and better methods for immunotherapy, (3) investigating the cross-talk between the tumor microenvironment (TME) and immune system, (4) conducting clinical trials to evaluate the efficacy of immunizing patients with idiotype or dendritic cell-based vaccines, and (5) exploring immunotherapies using myeloma antigens such as DKK1. Our recent research focuses on: (a) developing novel therapeutic mAbs and CAR-T cells for cancers, (b) identifying T-cell subsets that have potent antitumor effects after adoptive transfer, and (c) identifying TME components that induce tumor drug resistance.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Developing Novel CAR-T Cell Therapy For Hematologic Malignancies

The University of Melbourne

Professor Ricky Johnstone received his PhD from the University of Melbourne (UoM) in 1993 and after studying as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School established the Gene Regulation Laboratory at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in 2000. Promoted to Full Professor at UoM in 2011 he has published more than 250 peer-reviewed papers. In addition to running his own laboratory, he is now the Executive Director of Cancer Research at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre overseeing ~700 staff and students. In 2015 he was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and in 2020 he was named by PLOS Biology as in the top 0.14% of authors for his research subfield of Oncology & Carcinogenesis.

Prof Johnstone is a cancer researcher who has utilized genetic mouse models of leukemia and lymphoma to understand the epigenetic changes that underpin tumor onset and progression and to develop new therapies for clinical trial.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Dissecting the biology and exploiting the dependency of myeloma cells on P300/CBP

Institute of Biomedical Research from Salamanca

Noemi Puig, MD, PhD earned her medical degree from the Universidad Complutense in Madrid and she completed her residency in Internal Medicine and Hematology at the University Hospital La Fe in Valencia, Spain. She completed a 3-year fellowship in Lymphoma, Myeloma and Autologous Stem Cell Transplantation at the Princess Margaret Hospital in the University of Toronto, in Toronto, Canada. She earned a doctoral degree at the Medicine Department of the University of Salamanca, in Spain, with a thesis entitled “Optimization and Critical Analysis of Minimal Residual Disease Monitoring with ASO RQ-PCR in Patients with Multiple Myeloma and Comparison with Multiparameter Flow Cytometry”. Dr. Puig currently serves as a Consultant Physician at the Hematology Department in the University Hospital of Salamanca. She also works in the Flow Cytometry Laboratory of the University Hospital of Salamanca, where she is responsible for the studies developed by the Spanish Myeloma Group.

Dr. Puig is a member of the Programa para el Estudio de la Terapéutica en Hemopatías Malignas (PETHEMA) and the Spanish Myeloma Group (GEM) as well as of the EuroFlow Group.

Dr. Puig´s main research interests include the role of multiparameter flow cytometry and of mass spectrometry in diagnosis, risk stratification and minimal residual disease monitoring in patients with monoclonal gammopathies. She is an author or co-author in several research articles, reviews and book chapters.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Peripheral blood-based disease monitoring by mass spectrometry in patients with multiple myeloma

The University of Melbourne

I am an Assoc. Prof. and Group Leader at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre (Peter Mac; Melbourne, Australia). I formed my group in 2018 and my research program is focused upon enhancing the effectiveness of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, a form of immune therapy where a patient’s own immune cells are genetically engineered to recognize and kill tumor cells. I have published numerous seminal papers and research metrics place me in the top 1% of researchers in my field. Despite being a PI for just 5 years, I have already led 1 CAR T clinical trial and I am currently developing a second trial with a technology developed in my lab in 2020.

Previously my focus has been on using CAR T to treat cancers such as breast and lung cancer. However, recent clinical data indicates that CAR T cells have significant potential in multiple myeloma. Therefore, this project will be a key strategic enabler, allowing me to apply approaches developed in my lab to this disease.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Exploiting escape from Y-inactivation as a synthetic dependency in MYC-driven lymphoma

City of Hope National Medical Center

Dr. Siddiqi is an associate professor in the Department of Hematology/Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation and Director of the chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) program at COH. As an active member of the Toni Stephenson Lymphoma Center and the Immunotherapy Center at COH, she has been the institutional and, for some studies, national principal investigator of many phase 1, 2 and 3 clinical trials involving novel targeted therapies and cellular therapeutics such as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells in CLL and non-Hodgkin lymphomas. She works closely with Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program (CTEP), cooperative groups, and pharmaceutical companies on important clinical trials in order to bring novel, potentially lifesaving, therapeutics to our patients. As of June 1, 2021, she will be the Lymphoma Medical Director at the Irvine campus, set up open August 2022, which puts her in an ideal position to open impactful hematology clinical trials at CAN sites, starting with Orange county.

Program Name(s)

IMPACT

Project Title

Establishing Hematology Clinical Trial Hubs within the City of Hope Community and Affiliate Network

The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, Medical Center

Dr. June is the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and is currently Director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the Perelman School of Medicine, and Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a graduate of the Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX. In 2011, his research team published findings detailing a new therapy in which patients with refractory and relapsed chronic lymphocytic leukemia were treated with genetically engineered versions of their own T cells, CAR-Ts. CTL019, the CAR T cell developed in the June laboratory was the first cell and gene therapy to be approved by the US FDA. He has published more than 500 manuscripts and is the recipient of numerous honors, including a lifetime achievement award from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Program Name(s)

Specialized Center of Research Program

Project Title

Pan-heme CAR: Anti-CD38 CAR T cells for myeloid, lymphoid and plasma cell malignancies

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Constantine Mitsiades MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), Harvard Medical School, an Associate member of the Broad Institute, Cambridge, MA, and holds the "Shawna Ashlee Corman" Investigatorship in Multiple Myeloma at DFCI. His research focuses on understanding the mechanisms through which myeloma and other blood cancers interact with the bone marrow microenvironment and develop resistance to existing or investigational drugs or immune therapies, and how to target therapeutically those resistance mechanisms. His studies established that inhibition of BET bromodomain proteins blocks the critical oncoprotein c-Myc. His research also informed the design of several regimens which are now FDA-approved, represent a standard-of-care for MM treatment, and have become a "backbone" for combination with other novel agents, e.g., monoclonal antibodies. Several of these regimens contributed to the increased overall survival of MM patients in the last decade.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Pharmacological strategies to enhance T- and NK-cell-based therapies in blood cancers

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

I am an Associate Professor of Medicine (Hematology, Oncology, and Transplantation) at Fred Hutch with clinical trial and computational expertise. I have a broad background with a Master of Science in Clinical Investigation combined with computational sciences training, including a PhD in evolutionary models of aging and a KL2 career development award focused on microbiome bioinformatics. I leverage my clinical and computational expertise to make cancer treatment safer by improving supportive care. I characterize microbiota disruptions in patients with cancer, investigate their clinical significance, and test microbiota restorative therapeutics to improve clinical outcomes. Recently, I led the largest clinical trial of FMT in allogeneic stem cell transplant recipients to date. We used findings from this trial to design the proposed randomized placebo-controlled phase 2 trial of third-party FMT to prevent aGVHD after transplantation.

Program Name(s)

Academic Clinical Trials Program (ACT)

Project Title

Fecal microbiota transplantation to prevent acute GVHD after allogeneic stem cell transplantation

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Dr. Qi is a well-trained synthetic chemist, chemical biologist, and biologist with an interdisciplinary background in drug development. His research is focused on designing and developing biologically relevant small molecule inhibitors and degraders of epigenetic protein targets and utilizing these chemical tools to study the translational potential of these targets in cancers, including blood cancer.

Dr. Ken Anderson is well-known physician scientist who studies and treats MM. His research has led to a variety of novel therapies for clinical MM treatment.

Together, this team has brought multiple targets into potential treatment development for MM, including HDACs, KDMs, and RPN13. The complementary expertise between these two PIs will uncover novel biological insights into MM that can bring novel therapies into other hematological malignancies.

Program Name(s)

Discovery

Project Title

Dissect the function of histone demethylase KDM5 on overcoming drug resistance toward immunotherapy in multiple myeloma

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Christopher Flowers, MD, MS, FASCO is Professor and Chair of the UT MD Anderson Department of Lymphoma and Myeloma. In 2020, he also became the Division Head ad interim for the Division of Cancer Medicine. Dr. Flowers will serve as the LLS IMPACT overall PI. As Chair of the ASCO Health Disparities Committee, Dr. Flowers co-authored the AACR/ACS/ASCO/NCI position statement -Charting the Future for Cancer Disparities Research. He has held NCI and V Foundation grants to investigate the biology of racial disparities in lymphoma. He is an internationally recognized expert in lymphoma clinical and outcomes research and leads the Lymphoma Integrated Network for Access to Clinical trials for Under-represented Populations (LINCT-UP), a partnership with MCC and the Lyndon B. Johnson County Hospital in Houston to increase minority clinical trial participation at these sites.

Program Name(s)

IMPACT

Project Title

Research Infrastructure to Promote Enrollment of Underserved Patients on Clinical Trials