Who We Fund

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

Dr. Trent Hall is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the laboratory of Dr. John Crispino at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN. Dr. Hall received his doctorate from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in 2020 studying hematopoietic stem cell development in Dr. Shannon McKinney-Freeman’s laboratory. Dr. Hall’s current research interests include predisposition to myeloid malignancies and hematopoietic development.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Identifying novel regulators of leukemic progression in GATA2-deficiency syndrome

The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

Dr Tasian is a pediatric oncologist and physician-scientist who is interested in development of molecularly-targeted therapeutics for children with high-risk leukemias. She specializes in the clinical care of children with leukemia and lymphoma, is an internationally-recognized expert in pediatric ALL and AML, and serves as the Chief of the Hematologic Malignancies Program at CHOP. Her bench-to-bedside and bedside-back-to-bench translational laboratory research program focuses upon testing of kinase inhibitors and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell immunotherapies in genetic subsets of childhood ALL and AML. Dr Tasian has leadership roles in the Children’s Oncology Group (COG) ALL and Myeloid Diseases committees and LLS PedAL/EuPAL consortium, is the COG Developmental Therapeutics committee Vice-Chair of Biology for Hematologic Malignancies, and leads or co-leads several national or international early phase clinical trials testing precision medicine therapies in children with high-risk leukemias.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

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

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

Dr. Lindsley is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. in Immunology from Washington University School of Medicine, then completed a residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a fellowship in oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He is a member of the MDS Genetics Subcommittee for the NIH National MDS Study, NHLBI Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine Steering Committee, and the International Working Group for Prognosis in MDS (IWG-PM) molecular committee. The primary focus of his laboratory is the biology and treatment of myeloid malignancies. His genetic studies have led to new genomic models of leukemia classification and MDS outcome after stem cell transplantation. His laboratory uses mouse and cell line models to dissect the mechanistic basis of genetic cooperation during myeloid disease progression, with a specific focus on leukemia initiation in patients with predisposition syndromes and mutations that cause epigenetic alterations.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Genetic pathways of myeloid transformation and treatment response

Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network

Dr. Courtney Jones received her PhD from New York University in 2014 and trained as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado. Throughout her training, Courtney’s research focused on understanding and targeting acute leukemia cells. She is currently a Scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto. The goal of Dr. Jones’s research is to discovery new ways to target leukemia cells with the overall goal of improving outcomes for patients with leukemia while minimizing side effects. To date, her largest contribution to blood cancer research was the discovery of metabolic vulnerabilities of leukemia cells that have been translated into clinical trials in collaboration with her clinical colleagues. The objective of her current research studies is to discover and develop a new strategy to eradicate leukemia cells in patients for whom standard chemotherapy has failed.

Program Name(s)

Discovery

Project Title

Interrogation of glutathione biology in relapsed acute myeloid leukemia stem cells

MD Anderson Cancer Center

Dr. Meng Li is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Health Services Research at the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center and a nonresident fellow at the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics at the University of Southern California. Dr. Li completed her PhD in Pharmaceutical Outcomes Research and Policy at University of Washington, where co-PI, Dr. Flowers also completed his MS. Dr. Li’s research uses various data sources including population-based cancer registries, nationwide administrative claims databases, national survey data, and data from clinical trials and observational series to examine disease burden, factors that influence health care utilization, the effect of health care utilization on health outcomes, and the cost-sharing burden of prescription drugs. In particular, Her research has used Optum and SEER-Medicare data to examine disparity in initiation of immunotherapies among lung cancer and melanoma patients, the association between spending on several types of treatment and outcomes in breast cancer, and catastrophic spending among cancer patients on oral targeted anticancer medicines. Dr. Li has also developed methods to quantify novel elements of value for medical technologies in economic evaluations, which has important implications on the practice of value assessment. She meets regularly and collaborates with Drs. Shih and Flowers. Dr. Li’s research work has been published in top clinical, health economics, and health policy journals.

Program Name(s)

Equity in Access

Project Title

Investigating the Impact of Insurance Coverage on Access to Care and Outcomes among Lymphoma Patients

University of Cambridge

George Vassiliou is Professor of Hematological Medicine and Co-lead of the Hematological Malignancies Program at the University of Cambridge, and Consultant Hematologist at Cambridge University Hospitals.

He studies the pre-clinical evolution, molecular pathogenesis and treatment of myeloid cancers. Highlights of his work include the co-discovery of the shared precursor of myeloid cancers, clonal hematopoiesis (CH), the description of its lifelong natural history and the first demonstration that individuals at risk of these cancers can be identified years in advance, opening the prospect of their prevention. He also developed the first genomic diagnostic tools for myeloid cancers, discovered mechanisms of how they develop and identified hundreds of potential treatment targets using the first genome-wide CRISPR genetic screen in any human cancer. His work has led to development of new treatments, including METTL3 inhibitors that are now in clinical trials against acute myeloid leukemia.

Program Name(s)

Specialized Center of Research Program

Project Title

Development of a clinical program for myeloid cancer prevention

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

MD- Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Residencies and Fellowships in Clinical and radiation Oncology in Israel and Memorial Sloan-Kettering. Armored Brigade Physician (Major), IDF, project leader R&D branch, IDF.

Attending and Member, MSKCC. Co-Leader Lymphoma DMT, Chief- Radiation Hematology Service. Hodgkin and Non-Hodgkin NCCN guidelines committees.

Chairman of the International Lymphoma Radiation Oncology Group (www.ilrog.org)—over 1300 members in 75 countries.

Clinical Research focus on role of RT in salvage of lymphomas, breast cancer after chest RT, combined modality in PCNSL, RT for gastric MZL. Currently- clinical and biological aspects of sub-lethal radiation for lymphomas; role of RT to improve CAR-T cell therapy.

Translational research interest: Past- ATM mutations and risk of second cancers; autophagy as a mechanism for tumor cell death after radiation. Present- mechanisms and predictors of lethal effects of very low-dose RT on lymphoma cells and their environment.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Impact of sublethal radiation dose on tumor response, microenvironment and the immune system

Yale

Dr. Manyi Wei gained his B.S. degree at China Pharmaceutical University in Nanjing. Subsequently, he completed his Ph.D. training in Cell Biology at the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. During his Ph.D. research, Dr. Wei focused on the regulatory role of long non-coding RNA in gene expression and its impact on neuronal function. Dr. Wei has always nurtured a particular interest in understanding and developing novel treatment for leukemia. After his Ph.D. training, Dr. Wei joined the laboratory of Dr. Stephanie Halene at Yale Cancer Center and Yale University School of Medicine. He immediately began exciting work on RNA modifications and their functions in the initiation and progression of acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes and importantly on novel therapeutic approaches exploiting cell intrinsic and extrinsic effects of targeted inhibitors of RNA methylation. His goal is to contribute to the cure of leukemia.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Harnessing METTL3 inhibition in acute megakaryoblastic leukemia driven by the t(1;22) fusion involving a member of the m6A writer complex

Dr. Manabu Fujisawa received M.D. from Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan. Motivated by the experience as a hematologist having treated many patient with treatment-resistant disease, Dr. Fujisawa conducted a clinical study on clonality and clinical progression in multiple myeloma in Kameda Medical Center, Chiba. Dr. Fujisawa then began his basic research at University of Tsukuba in 2016, where he received PhD under the supervision of Pr. Mamiko Sakata-yanagimoto. Pr. Sakata’s lab focused on clonal hematopoiesis and malignant lymphoma, which Dr. Fujisawa studied the function of clonal hematopoietic-derived immune cells in the tumor microenvironment. In 2022, Dr. Fujisawa joined the laboratory of Pr. Christian Steidl in Lymphoid Cancer Research at the BC Cancer Research Centre in Vancouver, Canada, as a postdoctoral fellow.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Spatial architecture and malignant cell characterization of nodular lymphocyte-predominant Hodgkin lymphoma

MD Anderson Cancer Center

Michael Wang, MD, is Professor of Lymphoma and Myeloma at MD Anderson Cancer Center where he established the Mantle Cell Lymphoma Program of Excellence, the world’s only program dedicated exclusively to MCL research and treatment. He led trials resulting in 3 FDA approvals for MCL treatment. He leads a large lab focusing on overcoming resistance to MCL therapies and developing new ones. His detailed studies of tissue from patients with MCL has been instrumental in setting the stage for this application. Jia Zhou, PhD, is Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Apart from academia, he worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 7 years. His primary research interest is drug discovery and the development of novel small-molecule therapeutics for cancers and other diseases. He has established a fruitful collaboration with Dr. Wang and his lab and has great experience in leading both the chemical and pharmacological aspects of drug development.

Program Name(s)

Mantle Cell Lymphoma Research Initiative

Project Title

Development of novel BTK-MALT1 dual inhibitors to treat MCL

University of Florida

Project Title

Enhancing Connection and Communication with Community-Based Oncology Practices to Improve Cancer Clinical Trial Recruitment: The ECCO Study