Yibin Yang
Lymphoma
Yibin Yang, PhD
Philadelphia, PA
United States
Fox Chase Cancer Center
I completed my Ph.D. training with Dr. Michelle Kelliher at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, studying the ubiquitin-dependent signal transduction pathways. With this foundation, I joined Dr. Louis Staudt’s laboratory at the National Cancer Institute as a research fellow in 2010 to exploit the roles of innate immune signaling and protein ubiquitination machinery in the pathogenesis of Diffuse Large B cell lymphoma. In 2015, I received an NCI Transition Career Development Award to further investigate the roles of immune signaling and protein ubiquitination in lymphoid malignancies. I accepted a tenure track faculty position and started my lab at Fox Chase Cancer Center (FCCC) as an Assistant Professor in May 2016. At FCCC, I decided to shift my studies to the field of Peripheral T-Cell lymphoma and Hodgkin lymphoma, which have minimal available targeted therapy options currently. The main focus of my laboratory is to understand the immune regulatory pathways in these lymphoid malignancies.
Program Name(s)
Career Development Program
Project Title
Adam Olszewski
Follicular and marginal zone lymphoma
Adam Olszewski, MD
Providence, RI
United States
Rhode Island Hospital
Adam Olszewski, MD is a hematologist and oncologist specializing in the treatment of lymphomas. He graduated from the Medical University of Warsaw, Poland, and completed his postgraduate training at Roosevelt Hospital (Mount Sinai West) in New York, NY. His is currently Associate Professor of Medicine at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and conducts clinical research for patients with Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphomas at the Lifespan Cancer Institute at Rhode Island Hospital, Providence, RI. He is a Research Scholar of the American Cancer Society who has also been supported by awards from the American Society of Hematology, the National Institutes of Health, and the Rhode Island Foundation. Dr. Olszewski has authored over 100 scientific publications. His current research is focused on developing immunotherapies and molecularly targeted approaches for the treatment of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, as well as genomic correlates of responsiveness to these therapies.
Program Name(s)
Career Development Program
Project Title
Daisuke Nakada
preleukemia, leukemia
Daisuke Nakada, PhD
Houston, TX
United States
Baylor College of Medicine
I am honored and grateful to receive the Scholar Award from The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. This award will allow us to further investigate how metabolic pathways are used to enable epigenetic reprogramming in leukemia stem cells. These two mechanisms are dysregulated in a wide range of cancers including leukemia, and our recent studies have revealed that targeting metabolism and epigenetic regulators act synergistically to suppress leukemia. Our future studies may lead to novel strategies to treat leukemia by targeting these two mechanisms.
Program Name(s)
Career Development Program
Project Title
Synergistic targeting of metabolic and epigenetic vulnerabilities in leukemia stem cells
Lev Kats
myeloma and epigenetics
Lev Kats, PhD
Parkville, VIC
Australia
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
Craig Jordan
AML
Craig Jordan, PhD
Aurora, CO
United States
University of Colorado Denver, Anschutz Medical Campus
Dr. Craig T. Jordan is currently the Nancy Carroll Allen Professor and Chief of the Division of Hematology at the University of Colorado Denver. He has been studying human leukemia stem cells for over 20 years, using molecular and genetic analyses to identify characteristics that may enhance targeted therapy for leukemia. Dr. Jordan completed his doctoral studies at Princeton University and then went on to perform post-doctoral studies at MIT’s Whitehead Institute. He has been an editorial board member for several journals including Cell Stem Cell, Leukemia, and PLoS Biology. Dr. Jordan has published over 150 peer-reviewed original research articles, review articles and book chapters. His honors include the Helen Hay Whitney Fellowship, the Stohlman Scholar Award from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the Wehrheim Professorship in cancer research, and the NCI Outstanding Investigator award.
Program Name(s)
Specialized Center of Research Program
Project Title
Caribou Biosciences
immunotherapy, allo-CAR, NHL, MM
Caribou Biosciences,
Berkeley, CA
United States
TAP Partner
Caribou is a clinical-stage biotechnology company, co-founded by CRISPR pioneer and Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna, Ph.D., using next-generation CRISPR genome-editing technology to develop “off-the-shelf” (allogeneic) CAR therapies for hard-to-treat blood cancers.
Program Name(s)
Therapy Acceleration Program
Project Title
Supporting allogeneic CD371 (CLL-1) CAR development for acute myeloid leukemia
Michael Green
lymphoma biology
Michael Green, PhD
Houston, TX
United States
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Dr. Green is an Associate Professor and the Director of Translational and Laboratory Research in the Department of Lymphoma & Myeloma at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. His laboratory focusses on understanding how changes in gene function lead to lymphoma, and alter the way that lymphoma cells interact with the immune system. To do this, the Dr. Green’s laboratory employ’s cutting edge genomic technologies to analyze human tumors, patient derived xenograft models and transgenic mouse models, with the goal of identifying dependencies that can be therapeutically targeted. Dr. Green received support through an LLS Special Fellow award as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, where he highlighted the importance of mutations in the CREBBP gene in follicular lymphoma. Now, with the support of an LLS Scholar Award, he aims to investigate the mechanisms by which mutations in CREBBP drive lymphoma and how these may inform novel rationally-designed therapeutic approaches.
Program Name(s)
Career Development Program
Project Title
Investigating the role of CREBBP mutations and epigenetic crosstalk in B-cell lymphoma
Lori Muffly
Equity in Access
Lori Muffly, MD
Palo Alto, CA
United States
Stanford University
Dr. Lori Muffly MD MS is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Stanford University in the Division of Blood and Marrow Transplantation and Cellular Therapy. Dr. Muffly is a clinician and clinical investigator whose research includes both health outcomes and clinical trials pertaining to adults with acute leukemia. Her clinical practice serves adults across Northern California with advanced acute leukemias who require hematopoietic cell transplantation and other cellular immunotherapies. She has a specific research interest in improving access to specialty cancer care and reducing health disparities in young adults with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and has published extensively on these topics. She also serves as the PI of multiple investigator-initiated health outcomes studies and clinical trials, including studies evaluating measurable residual disease in adult acute lymphoblastic leukemia, novel chimeric antigen receptor T cell studies for acute leukemia, and she leads a recently established real world consortium investigating outcomes following cellular therapies administered to adults with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Dr. Muffly has successfully collaborated with Drs. Parsons and Keegan on several previous studies and publications related to adolescent and young adult leukemia and access to cancer care and has delivered numerous national talks on the subject.
Program Name(s)
Equity in Access
Project Title
Catherine Diefenbach
DLBCL immunology
Catherine Diefenbach, MD
New York, NY
United States
NYU Grossman School of Medicine
I am a translational lymphoma researcher and associate professor at the NYU Perlmutter Cancer Center (PCC). My research focuses on the relationship between lymphoma, microenvironment, and systemic immunity. I lead an R01 funded study of the microbiome in DLBCL, and and serve as PI on a multi-investigator R01 investigating new immune strategies for CAR T cells. I have presented data on immune profiling in Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) at national and international meetings. Clinically, I have led the effort to integrate immune based approaches into lymphoma therapy, through development of the intergroup Phase 2 protocol E4412 combining brentuximab, nivolumab, and ipilimumab in relapsed HL. I have obtained funding for my research from: the NCI, the ACS, the Lymphoma Research Foundation, Doris Duke (internally awarded), and the NCI Clinical Investigator Team Leader Award for my work with ECOG-ACRIN. My expertise in lymphoma immunology makes me well qualified to lead this current project.
Program Name(s)
Translational Research Program
Project Title
T cell Memory in Cure of Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma: An Investigation of the Immune Interactome
Ryan Wilcox
T-cell lymphoma
Ryan Wilcox, MD, PhD
Ann Arbor, MI
United States
Regents of the University of Michigan
The most common T-cell lymphoma in the United States includes a heterogeneous mix of lymphomas that lack distinguishing characteristics and, until recently, remained clinically and molecularly “unspecified”. Improved understanding of T-cell lymphoma pathogenesis and the development of novel therapeutic strategies will be needed to address this challenge and improve outcomes for patients afflicted with these aggressive lymphomas. Many questions, including the “cell of origin”, the role of antigen-, costimulatory-, and cytokine-receptor signaling, and the contribution of myeloid-derived antigen-presenting cells in disease pathogenesis remain obscure. My laboratory uses complementary mouse models and primary T-cell lymphoma specimens (in ex vivo and patient-derived xenograft studies) to address these fundamental and clinically relevant questions. We are poised to clinically translate our laboratory-based findings into novel therapeutic strategies that we hope will improve outcomes for patients afflicted with these aggressive lymphomas.
Program Name(s)
Translational Research Program
Project Title
XPO-1 as a novel therapeutic target in GATA-3 expressing mature T-cell lymphomas
Paolo Caimi
CAR-T clinical trial for CLL
Paolo Caimi, MD
Cleveland, OH
United States
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)
Andrew Lane
BPDCN
Andrew Lane, PhD, MD
Boston, MA
United States
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