Who We Fund

University of Southern California

Dr. Sheng Li is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Translational Genomics, at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California (USC). She is the Program Co-Leader of Epigenetic Regulation in Cancer (ERC) at the USC NCI-designated Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Li received her PhD in Computational Biology from Cornell University in 2014, where she focused on the epigenome dynamics of leukemia relapse. Following her PhD, she served as an Instructor of Bioinformatics at Weill Cornell Medicine. In 2016, Dr. Li joined the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2022.

In 2024, her lab transitioned to the USC Keck School of Medicine. Dr. Li leads a research program centered on understanding the impact of somatic mutations and aging on blood cancer initiation by identifying critical epigenetic aberrations that disrupt gene expression regulating hematopoiesis. Her work leverages multi-omics and integrative data mining to study how age-related inflammation shapes the evolutionary trajectories of mutant hematopoietic stem cells in leukemogenesis. The long-term goal of her research is to identify novel therapeutics to mitigate leukemogenesis and extend human health span and life span. Dr. Li recevied NextGen Star Award from American Association for Cancer Research and Maximizing Investigators' Research Award from NIH National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Epigenetic heterogeneity in age-related clonal hematopoiesis and acute myeloid leukemia

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

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.

Rutgers University

A PharmD by training, I then obtained my PhD guided by Dr. Manuel Serrano at the CNIO studying Sirt1 role in metabolism and cancer, which led to 4 first-author and 1 corresponding papers, plus 11 co authorships. Next, I joined the Ferrando Lab at Columbia University where I published two seminal papers identifying a NOTCH1-driven Myc enhancer critical for T-cell development and leukemia, and dissecting the role of cancer metabolism in the resistance to anti-NOTCH1 therapy. I started my independent career at Rutgers in July 2017. In these 4 years, I have established a highly successful and productive laboratory, as reflected by the multiple funding sources obtained (including R01, ACS or AACR grants, among others), as well as by the publication of 3 corresponding author studies: a Blood Cancer Discovery paper identifying an enhancer of PTEN in leukemia; a Leukemia paper describing the antileukemic effects of SHMT inhibition; and a Blood paper describing the therapeutic effects of mitochondrial uncoupling in T-ALL.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Therapeutic exploitation of novel mouse models and metabolic interventions in leukemia

University of Colorado Denver, Anschutz Medical Campus

Dr. Collins is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Hematology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, where she leads a translational research program studying the mechanisms of preleukemic transformation in myeloid malignancies. Following her undergraduate studies at Williams College, Dr. Collins received her MD/PhD from the University of Michigan, where she worked with Dr. Jay Hess studying the role of collaborator proteins in HOXA9-mediated leukemic transformation. She then completed residency and fellowship training in Hematology/Oncology at Stanford, where she completed her postdoctoral research training in Dr. Ravi Majeti’s lab. Her current research focuses on understanding how combinations of genetic mutations alter hematopoietic stem cell function and drive progression from preleukemic states to aggressive myeloid malignancies, such as AML and CMML. Using engineered human stem cell models and primary patient samples, her work aims to identify mechanisms of leukemic transformation and therapeutic vulnerabilities that can be targeted early in disease evolution.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Investigating the role of preleukemia duration and clonal burden in progression to AML

Weill Cornell Medicine

Ramon Massoni-Badosa, PhD is a graduate of Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona in 2023, and his PhD focused on applying single-cell genomics technologies to benchmark the effect of sample preservation in single-cell RNA-seq data (Massoni-Badosa R. Genome Biol 2020), create a single-cell-driven atlas of cell types in human tonsils (Massoni-Badosa R., Immunity in press), and track the clonal evolution of CLL to Richter's syndrome (Nadeu,* Royo,* Massoni-Badosa*, Playa-Albinyana*, Garcia-Torre* Nat Med 2022). As highlighted in these three publications, he has gained extensive experience in large-scale single-cell multi-omics projects, as well as in combining computational and biological knowledge to gain biological and clinical insights. During his postdoc in the ten Hacken and Landau labs, Ramon will leverage his expertise to improve the mechanistic understanding of Richter’s syndrome, with the ultimate goal of identifying new targets to treat this incurable disease.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Uncovering MGA-driven epigenetic reprogramming in Richter's syndrome

University of Iceland

Professor Sigurður Yngvi Kristinsson is currently consolidating his position as one of the leading researchers world-wide in the field of multiple myeloma, its precursors, its epidemiology, progression, and treatment. This has been the main thrust of his scientific and clinical efforts from the time he defended his thesis on monoclonal gammopathies at the Karolinska Institutet in 2009. In 2012 he became the youngest full professor at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Iceland and he is a consultant at Landspitali University Hospital. He designed and leads the largest myeloma screening study in the world, the iStopMM project in which over 80,000 individuals provided informed consent. His current research group includes 7 PhD-students, three postdocs, a lab with 4 biologists, 6 research nurses, three statisticians/data manager, and five support staff. He is an author of more than 110 scientific papers including the current guidelines for myeloma treatment and follow up and has an h-index of 57.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Early Detection and Intervention in Smoldering Multiple Myeloma: population-based screening and treatment; Edit-SMM

University of California San Diego

Dr. Su is Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science in the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at the University of California, San Diego, where she directs the Oncofertility Program. Dr. Su completed residency in obstetrics and gynecology, fellowship in reproductive endocrinology, and Master’s of Science in Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as implementation science training through NCI’s Training in Dissemination and Implementation Research in Cancer Program. Dr. Su is a physician scientist who conducts patient oriented research on reproductive health in young cancer survivors. Through innovative observational and interventional studies, team-based science, and community engagement, Dr. Su’s studies focus on estimating reproductive risks after cancer, implementing evidence-based practices, and improving equity in reproductive health care delivery, funded by NCI, NICHD, American Cancer Society, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Recent work on health policies as an intervention to improve access to care suggest that state-level fertility preservation benefit mandates are not working as intended. This team with existing collaborations and complementary methodologic and clinical expertise will use national administrative data to estimate the impact of mandated insurance benefits on fertility preservation utilization and affordability, in order to inform future federal and state laws and regulations.

Program Name(s)

Equity in Access

Project Title

Impact of State Health Insurance Mandates on Affordability and Utilization of Fertility Preservation in Adolescent and Young Adults with Blood Cancers

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Dr. Hormoz is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School and Department of Data Science at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He obtained his PhD in Applied Physics from Harvard University. His postdoctoral studies were conducted jointly as a theorist at the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics (UCSB), and as an experimentalist at Caltech. Hormoz lab’s mission is to control biological systems to understand life and cure disease such as cancer. His lab develops new technologies for recording and measuring the molecular states of individual cells and computational frameworks for interpreting the large data sets that these measurements generate. Dr. Hormoz’s research on blood cancers has focused on reconstructing the history of cancer in individual patients to understand when cancer first occurs and how cancer cells expand in each patient.

Program Name(s)

Discovery

Project Title

Predicting progression in myeloproliferative neoplasm patients by reconstructing the history of disease in each patient

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

The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

I am an assistant professor of oncology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine where I treat patients suffering from leukemias and lymphomas. In my clinical practice, I experience firsthand the lack of treatment options and the poor outcomes in patients with relapsed T cell leukemias and T cell lymphomas. Therefore, my laboratory research focuses on the development of new therapies for the treatment of these T cell cancers. Using my background in T cell biology (Paul et al Immunity 2012, Paul et al Science Signaling 2014) and my collaborators expertise in antibody design, I developed therapies that selectively kill T cell cancers and spare the majority of normal T cells (Paul et al. Sci. Transl. Med. 2021). My goal is to conduct the preclinical validation of the T cell cancer targeting therapies so they can be tested in patients through early phase clinical trials. We hope that our novel therapies will provide new treatment options and improve survival in patients with T cell leukemias and lymphomas.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

TCR-directed immunotoxins and antibody drug conjugates for the treatment of T cell malignancies

Imperial College, University of London

After completing a PhD in Immunology at Trinity College Dublin, I moved to Imperial College London to study how persistent infection with a virus causes Leukemia, Lymphoma and other diseases. The virus in question is Human T cell leukemia virus type-1 (HTLV-1), which infects the very cells which defend us against viruses: T cells. Around 5% of virus-carriers develop aggressive blood cancer (Adult T cell leukemia/lymphoma, ATL), in which one infected T cell becomes malignant. ATL is very difficult to treat, and people with the most aggressive forms survive for less than a year. I made the game-changing discovery that ATL-like T cells circulate in the blood of carriers who go on to develop ATL years before they show symptoms of ATL. I am now developing new diagnostics which can detect ATL early, and together with clinicians at the U.K. National Centre for Human Retrovirology and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre, will test whether a recently licenced drug can eliminate ATL-like T cells in high-risk carriers.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Detection and treatment of Adult T cell leukemia/lymphoma in the premalignant stage.