John Crispino
myelofibrosis, pediatric leukemia and Downs
John Crispino, PhD
Memphis, TN
United States
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Dr. John Crispino is Chief of the Division of Experimental Hematology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He received his PhD from MIT for research on the mechanisms of RNA splicing performed in the laboratory of Dr. Phillip Sharp and then performed post-doctoral hematology research at Harvard Medical School with Dr. Stuart Orkin. Dr. Crispino and members of his laboratory have made many important contributions to improve our understanding of the mechanisms of normal and aberrant blood development. Currently, his research is focused on the role of GATA1 in blood cell development, mechanisms of leukemogenesis in children with Down syndrome and the characterization of genetic changes that drive malignant progression of MDS and MPN. He has authored over 170 manuscripts, with recent papers in Cancer Discovery, Journal of Clinical Investigation, and Blood. Dr. Crispino is a recent Associate Editor of Blood, on the editorial boards of Leukemia and Blood Cancer Journal and past chair of an NIH study section.
Program Name(s)
Special Grants
Specialized Center of Research Program
Project Title
Aberrant Megakaryopoiesis in the MPNs
Understanding Leukemia in Children with Down Syndrome to Develop Better Therapies
Yue Wang, PhD
Los Angeles, CA
United States
University of California, Los Angeles
Yue Wang, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher at UCLA with extensive expertise in developmental and stem cell biology. He earned his PhD in Regenerative Medicine from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he conducted groundbreaking research on the regulatory mechanisms of trophoblast lineage differentiation. Dr. Wang also developed a stem-cell based organoid model to study Zika virus effects on human placenta. At UCLA, he works with Dr. Hanna Mikkola and uses single cell technologies to understand how Trisomy 21 affects human B cell development and transformation to aggressive form of B-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia in children with Down Syndrome. His work aims to identify cellular origins and molecular mechanisms driving this unique type of leukemia, offering potential insights for safer and more effective therapies.
Program Name(s)
Career Development Program
Project Title
Andrew Hantel
Equity in Access
Andrew Hantel, MD
Boston, MA
United States
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Dr. Hantel is a faculty member in the Divisions of Population Sciences and Leukemia at DFCI and an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on characterizing and remediating clinical trial enrollment disparities for patients with blood cancers, for which he has been awarded career development awards from the NCI (K08) and ASCO to develop and test related multilevel interventions. He also leads multicenter care delivery trials assessing social determinants of health and the impact of Duffy null phenotype on trial participation and outcomes. Work related to these projects has led to multiple publications in journals such as in JAMA, JCO, JNCI, and NEJM. He co-chairs the working group of the DFCI Clinical Trial Access Committee and serves as the Health Disparities and Leukemia Committee Liaison for the Alliance cooperative group. In his clinical role, he cares for patients with leukemia and related hematologic malignancies.
Program Name(s)
Equity in Access
Project Title
The Collaboration and Infrastructure Program for Diversifying Blood Cancer Clinical Trials
Eric Smith
improving CAR-T
Eric Smith, MD, PhD
Boston, MA
United States
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Eric Smith, MD PhD is Director of Translational Research for Immune Effector Cell Therapies at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) where his primary responsibility is as PI of a gene and cell engineering pre-clinical laboratory. He is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School (Immunology PhD Faculty); Associate Member at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT; a Member at the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy; and the founding faculty director of the IMmunotherapy Platform for Antibody and CAR Therapeutics Development and Translation (IMPACT2) Center at DFCI. He received his MD/PhD and internal medicine training at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and medical oncology and post-doctoral training at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and stayed on as faculty in the Cellular Engineering Center and Myeloma/Cellular Therapy services. He was recruited to DFCI in 2020 to advance the home-grown adoptive cellular therapy pipeline there. The Smith Lab for Genetic and Cellular Engineering focuses on pre-clinical efforts to advance the field and developing therapies for both hematologic and solid tumors for the benefit of patients. More than a dozen clinical trials have been initiated stemming from his team’s lab work. The most developed of which is a first-in-class CAR targeting GPRC5D, a target he described as important for the immunotherapy of myeloma; he and his colleagues reported the phase I study in NEJM, and a phase II multi-center registration study is now ongoing.
Program Name(s)
Discovery
Project Title
Xu Ji
Equity in Access
Xu Ji, PhD
Atlanta, GA
United States
Emory University
Dr. Ji is a health services researcher with extensive experience leveraging insurance payer data to study policy issues pertaining to U.S. healthcare systems, with an emphasis on Medicaid. Her research strives to understand the effect of Medicaid policies on healthcare access and outcomes for vulnerable youth and adults. She recently extended this experience to data on pediatric and adolescent/young adult (AYA) cancer survivorship. She co-leads (with Dr. Sharon Castellino) NCI 1R03CA259665-01 to investigate how the Affordable Care Act affects treatment timeliness and survival in AYAs with cancer. She leads a Medicaid initiative within the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study, where she oversees an ongoing linkage of administrative Medicaid data to a nationwide cohort of cancer survivors. She also leads a Junior Faculty Focused Award evaluating Medicaid coverage continuity for pediatric cancer survivors in a single institution.
Program Name(s)
Equity in Access
Project Title
Catherine Bollard
pediatric blood cancers and immunotherapy
Catherine Bollard, MD
Washington, DC
United States
Children's Research Institute
Dr. Bollard received her medical degree at the University of Otago. She is board certified both in pediatrics and hematology. She is currently the Bosworth Chair for Cancer Biology, the Director of the Center for Cancer and Immunology Research, and the Director of the Program for Cell Enhancement and Technologies for Immunotherapy (CETI) at Children’s National Health System. She is a Professor of Pediatrics and of Microbiology, Immunology, and Tropical Medicine at The George Washington University and the Associate Center Director for Translational Research and Innovation at the GW Cancer Center. Dr. Bollard is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and is the current President of the Foundation for the Accreditation of Cellular Therapy (FACT). She is currently Editor in Chief of Blood Advances. She has over 200 peer reviewed publications. Her bench and translational research focuses on improving outcomes for patients after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and on the development of novel cell therapies for cancer and virus-associated diseases.
Program Name(s)
Translational Research Program
T cells with native and chimeric receptors against multiple tumor targets for acute myeloid leukemia
Jolanta Grembecka
leukemia therapeutics
Jolanta Grembecka, PhD
Ann Arbor, MI
United States
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 LLS Scholar and ACS Research Scholar recipient.
Program Name(s)
Translational Research Program
Project Title
ASH1L degradation as a new treatment for acute leukemia
Targeted combination therapies for leukemia with NUP98 translocations
Sweta Patel, PhD
Aurora, CO
United States
University of Colorado Denver, Anschutz Medical Campus
I am a scientist of Indian origin who moved to the US upon completion of a Master’s in Pharmaceutical Biotechnology degree. I obtained my PhD in Cancer Biology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, in the laboratory of Dr. Rob Welner. My PhD project focused on identifying basic mechanisms of drug resistance in blood cancer stem cells. This work culminated in 4 first author and 9 co-author publications. To gain experience in translational research, grant writing and mentoring, I am pursuing postdoctoral studies with Dr. Craig Jordan at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Here, I am leveraging my training in blood cancer and stem cell biology to identify new approaches for targeting malignant stem cells in myelodysplastic syndrome. This training will help me achieve my long-term goal of establishing an independent translational research program to improve outcomes for blood cancer patients and mentor students interested in pursuing a blood cancer research career.
Program Name(s)
Career Development Program
Project Title
Nitin Jain
CLL
Nitin Jain, MD
Houston, TX
United States
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Nitin Jain, MD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Leukemia at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He earned his medical degree from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. He completed Internal Medicine residency at the Medical College of Wisconsin and fellowship in Hematology/Oncology at the University of Chicago. Dr. Jain research interests include new drug development for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Dr. Jain is Principal Investigator of several investigator-initiated phase I-II clinical trials, including combination targeted therapies (ibrutinib and venetoclax) in CLL, checkpoint inhibitors in Richter transformation, novel CD22 antibody drug conjugate in B-ALL, venetoclax + chemotherapy in B- and T-ALL, and off-the-self allogeneic CAR-T in B-ALL. The trial combining ibrutinib and venetoclax was published in New England Journal of Medicine in 2019. He has won many awards including ASCO merit award, Sabin Family Foundation Award in 2018 and MD Anderson Faculty Scholar award in 2020.
Program Name(s)
Career Development Program
Translational Research Program
Project Title
Combination Targeted Therapy in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia
Shannon Maude
Immunotherapy for ALL
Shannon Maude, MD PhD
Philadelphia, PA
United States
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Dr. Shannon Maude is a pediatric oncologist and clinical trialist in the Cancer Immunotherapy Program at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Dr. Maude received her M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and completed her residency in pediatrics as well as fellowship in pediatric hematology-oncology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Maude developed the Cancer Immunotherapy and BMT Fellowship at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and currently serves as a Medical Director in the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Maude is a member of the Children’s Oncology Group ALL committee and leads investigator-initiated and international multi-center clinical trials of engineered T cell therapies for childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Program Name(s)
Career Development Program
Project Title
Yoke Seng Lee
AML
Yoke Seng Lee, PhD
Boston, MA
United States
The Brigham and Women’s Hospital
My scientific background involves the functional characterization of rare immune cells called dendritic cells in advanced melanoma patients. These cells are master regulators of immunity and are responsible for orchestrating anti-cancer responses driven by effector cells called T cells. My PhD focused on patients who received immunotherapy via antibodies that reinvigorate the immune system, also known as immune checkpoint inhibitors. I collected patient blood samples before and during treatment, and found that a critical subtype of dendritic cell is numerically and functionally impaired in patients who did not respond to immunotherapy compared to those who responded. In my current lab, I leveraged my experience in immune cell research and now study how a novel drug combination can be used to target and kill acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells. This innovative approach targets two biologically important processes within a cell – the protein-making machinery and the control of cell death.
Program Name(s)
Career Development Program
Gerlinde Wernig, MD
Stanford, CA
United States
Stanford University
Gerlinde Wernig, M.D. is an Associate Professor of Pathology at Stanford University and a world expert on fibrosis and blood cancers. She co-discovered the JAK2 V617F mutation that drives myeloproliferative neoplasms and identified c-JUN as a key regulator of fibrosis across organs. Her laboratory develops advanced models of human fibrotic disease, using patient-derived organoids, xenografts, and mouse systems to uncover how inflammation and cancer signaling reshape tissues. By combining next-generation single-cell and multi-omics approaches, Dr. Wernig’s research identifies new targets to treat fibrosis and bone-marrow failure. As a clinical hematopathologist, she brings deep diagnostic expertise to bridge scientific discovery and patient care.
Program Name(s)
Hairy Cell Leukemia Research Initiative