Who We Fund

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

Children's Research Institute

Michael Keller, M.D., is a pediatric immunologist at Children's National Hospital and specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of primary and secondary immunodeficiency disorders. He has authored many peer-reviewed articles and contributed to expert consensus guidelines on the treatment and diagnosis of primary immunodeficiency disorders. Dr. Keller is a member of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology (AAAAI); the Clinical Immunology Society; the European Society of Immunodeficiency; and the Primary Immunodeficiency Treatment Consortium (PIDTC).  Dr. Keller's research focuses on the use of adoptive T-cell therapies for treatment of infections in immunocompromised patients, including the use of this therapy to improve outcomes in children with primary immunodeficiency disorders as well as those undergoing bone marrow transplantation for cancer. 

He is the primary investigator of several Phase I-II studies of virus-specific T-cell immunotherapy. Dr. Keller lives in Maryland with his wife and two sons; and enjoys travel, hiking, and martial arts.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

T-cell immunotherapy for prevention of COVID-19 following bone marrow transplantation

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Research

Qian Zhang is a postdoctoral fellow in the Dr. Abdel-Wahab’s lab at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She developed synthetic introns to selectively targeting U2AF1 mutated myeloid cells. U2AF1 mutations characterize high risk forms of MDS and are also common in elderly patients with AML. She aims to optimize these synthetic introns and develop novel lipid nanoparticles delivery of the synthetic introns into mice. Qian received her Ph.D. training in the Dr. Krainer lab at Cold spring harbor laboratory, where she developed novel RNA therapeutics to target a driver mutation of a deadly pediatric brain tumor known as Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Gliomas. This work was published in Science Translational Medicine with Qian as a first author. She also contributed to the development of innovative RNA therapeutics to modulate RNA splicing in cystic fibrosis. Qian is a key coauthor for these studies that were published in papers in Nucleic Acids Research, PNAS, and Nature Communications.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Synthetic introns to target U2AF1 mutant leukemias and dissect molecular basis for mis-splicing

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

TAP Partner

Faron is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on building the future of immunotherapy by harnessing the power of the immune system to tackle cancer and inflammation. The precision immunotherapy in clinical development has the potential to provide permanent immune stimulation for difficult-to-treat cancers through targeting myeloid function.

Program Name(s)

Therapy Acceleration Program

Project Title

A phase 2 study of Bexmarilimab, an anti-Clever1 monoclonal antibody, in combination with azacitidine in patients with high-risk MDS

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

Therapeutic targeting of AML stem cells

University of California, San Francisco

Dr. Arun Wiita is a physician-scientist and Associate Professor in the Dept. of Laboratory Medicine and Dept. of Bioengineering & Therapeutic Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Wiita’s research focuses on mass spectrometry-based proteomics, target discovery, protein engineering, and cellular engineering toward the development of novel therapies for blood cancers. Dr. Wiita also directs the UCSF Stephen and Nancy Grand Multiple Myeloma Translational Initiative (MMTI) Laboratory. Dr. Wiita is a prior recipient of the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, a Clinical Scientist Development Award from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator Award, among others, and is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He completed his residency in Clinical Pathology at UCSF, his MD and PhD at Columbia, with graduate training in single molecule biophysics, and undergraduate studies in Chemistry at Princeton.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Optimized, computationally engineered CD70-targeting CAR-T cells for high-risk multiple myeloma

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Dr. Adi Nagler received her Ph.D. at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 2021, under the mentorship of Prof. Yardena Samuels. There, she spearheaded studies that identified intra-tumoral intracellular bacterial peptides eliciting an immune response by melanoma-infiltrating lymphocytes, suggesting a novel source of antigens within tumors (Kalaora & Nagler Nature 2021). As a postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Catherine Wu’s lab, she is studying the impact of the microbiome on T cell response in bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome (BOS) following allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT). She is applying spatial transcriptomics methodology together with characterization of the immunopeptidome of BOS tissue specimens to define the role of bacterial presented peptides in the pathogenesis of this devastating complication of HCT. Overall, her studies aim is to explore the potential link between T cell antigen specificity to these microbial peptides and initiation and propagation of BOS.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

The microbiome-induced immune response role in bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome following allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation

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.

Durham VA Health Care System

Dr. Friedman is a hematologist-oncologist at the Durham VA Health Care System (DVAHCS) and National TeleOncology (NTO) Program, a Professor at the Duke University School of Medicine, and is the Deputy Director of the VA National Oncology Program. She is the DVAHCS site PI for the NCI and VA Interagency Group to Accelerate Trials Enrollment (NAVIGATE) program, which facilitates enrollment of Veterans with cancer into NCI-funded clinical trials. She is the lead for the Cancer Clinical Research Service (CCRS) in NTO, which offers clinical trial navigation to Veterans with cancer and runs decentralized cancer clinical trials across the VA network.

Program Name(s)

Equity in Access

Project Title

REACH: Researching & Enhancing Access to Clinical trials in Veterans with Hematologic cancers

Columbia University Medical Center

Riccardo Dalla-Favera, MD, Professor of Pathology & Cell Biology, is the founder and Director of the Institute for Cancer Genetics at Columbia University. He has dedicated his 40-year long career to the study of the pathogenesis of B cell malignancies, including B Cell Lymphoma and Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, and contributed significantly to the understanding of the genetics and biology of these diseases, as quoted in major textbooks of medicine and oncology. These studies have direct impacts on the diagnostics and therapeutic targeting of B cell cancers. His work is widely recognized by numerous National and International prizes and awards, including the 2006 William Dameshek Prize from the American Society of Hematology and the 2017 American Association for Cancer Research GHA Clowes Memorial Award. He is an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Program Name(s)

Discovery

Project Title

Genomics of Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma: pervasive role of super-enhancer hypermutation in dysregulating oncogene expression

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center

I am a pediatric oncologist and associate professor in the division of bone marrow transplantation at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. I have a clinical and research interest in graft versus host disease because this is the most significant, devastating and life-impacting complication after a bone marrow transplant. I led the study in children of high dose oral vitamin A and showed that when given before starting chemotherapy, vitamin A reduces acute gastrointestinal and chronic graft versus host disease. I am now collaborating with 3 adult BMT programs to try and validate my findings in adult BMT patients as adults tend to have more chronic GVHD than children and I would like to extend this easy and effective strategy to patients of all ages across the US and worldwide.

Program Name(s)

Academic Clinical Trials Program (ACT)

Project Title

A randomized clinical trial of oral vitamin A to reduce chronic graft versus host disease in BMT