Who We Fund

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Steve Treon MD, PhD is a Senior Physician and the Director of the Bing Center for Waldenstrom’s Macroglobuliemia (WM) at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He was the PI for 17 clinical trials which advanced many of the agents currently used to treat WM. By whole-genome sequencing, his laboratory first identified highly recurring MYD88 mutations in WM patients. Translational work in his laboratory showed that BTK was a downstream target of mutated MYD88, enabling a pivotal trial for which he was the PI that led to the first-ever approval of a drug (ibrutinib) and supported the approval and/or development of other BTK-inhibitors for WM. Dr. Treon’s laboratory also identified other critical pro-survival targets related to mutated MYD88 signaling that include IRAK1 and HCK. With the Harvard Medicinal Chemistry Department, he has pursued development of potent and selective inhibitors targeting HCK and IRAK1 for MYD88 mutated lymphomas.

Program Name(s)

Therapy Acceleration Program

Project Title

Targeting mutated MYD88 pro-survival signaling in B-cell malignancies

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Dr. Soheil Meshinchi is a physician scientist and a Full Member at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, as well as Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine. With over 25 years of experience in AML biology, he chairs the COG Myeloid Disease Biology Committee and the NCI designated Hematopoietic Integrated Science Center (HM-ITSC) to help translate laboratory discoveries into clinical practice. He leads the novel target and biomarker discovery for the LLS Children’s Initiative and the Pediatric Acute Leukemia (PedAL) efforts. As the director of NCI TARGET AML initiative and the Target Pediatric AML (TpAML), , he has led multi-omic studies of over 3000 children and young adults; Studies including Whole Genome Sequencing, Transcriptome sequencing, miRNA sequencing, Methylation profiling as well as the ongoing long read RNA sequencing to fully define splice isoforms in normal and malignant hematopoiesis.

Program Name(s)

Dare to Dream

Specialized Center of Research Program

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Novel Immunotherapeutic Development in Childhood AML

Multi-modal Immunotherapeutic Targeting of AML-restricted Targets in Infants and Children

Novel immunotherapeutic strategies in infants with high risk AML

Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

I am a researcher who studies epigenetic regulation in cancer. The over-arching goal of my research is to understand the molecular mechanism of epigenetic regulators in cancer and develop novel therapeutic strategies for cancer. To achieve this goal, I have acquired systematic training through working in laboratories in both fields. My Ph.D. training was in cancer biology and my postdoctoral training is in chromatin biology. My training requires me to develop refined skills as well as independent thinking ability, and I published high impact papers in both fields. Therefore, throughout my scientific career, I have demonstrated a strong track record of conducting innovative research. For the next few years, I will continue this line of research to further understand the epigenetic mechanisms in governing the malignant state in leukemia and explore novel therapeutic strategies.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Investigating the impact of hotspot mutations in a chromatin reader on leukemogenesis

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

Massachusetts General Hospital

Dr. Graubert is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Hematologic Malignancy Program at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center where he holds the Jon and JoAnn Hagler Chair in Oncology. Dr. Graubert is a physician-scientist with a laboratory-based research focus on the genetics of myeloid malignancies, including acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). His group has used new technologies to identify genetic alterations in patients with MDS and AML, then created animal models to study their mechanism of action and susceptibility to novel therapies. In addition to his research, Dr. Graubert oversees faculty recruitment and development for the Hematologic Malignancy Program and provides clinical care in the Center for Leukemia. He co-leads the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Consortium Leukemia Program, is an Associate Member of the Broad Institute, and serves on scientific review panels for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, the American Society of Hematology, the National Institutes of Health, and Genome Canada.

Program Name(s)

Specialized Center of Research Program

Project Title

Exploiting Vulnerabilities in RNA Splicing to Treat Hematologic Malignancies

Weill Cornell Medicine

Ari Melnick, MD, is the Gebroe Family Professor of Hematology/Oncology and a Professor of Medicine, Immunology and Pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medical College (WCMC) in New York City, USA. He is a leader in the field of lymphoma and leukemia experimental therapeutics, having developed multiple novel therapies to correct aberrant transcriptional regulation and signaling in these tumors. Dr. Melnick authored more than 300 published manuscripts in journals such as Nature, Science, Cell, Cancer Discovery, Cancer Cell, Nature Medicine, Nature Immunology, and the New England Journal of Medicine. He is a past ASH Faculty Scholar, LLS Scholar, Burroughs Wellcome Translational Research Scholar and Kimmel Foundation Scholar and is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the American Association of Physicians. He is an ICML Bonadonna Lecturer and recipient of the 2020 Beutler Lecture and Prize from the American Society of Hematology. He has organized and chaired many of the top level scientific meetings in the field for ASH, AACR, FASEB, etc.

Program Name(s)

Special Grants

Project Title

Molecular Pathogenesis and Therapeutic Targets for Transformed Marginal Zone and BN2 Lymphomas

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Dr. Strati is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Lymphoma and Myeloma and in the Department of Translational Molecular Pathology at MD Anderson Cancer Center, in Houston, TX. He is also the Clinical Director for the Lymphoma Tissue Bank. Dr. Strati earned his medical degree cum laude from the San Raffaele University of Milan (Italy) in 2008, and completed an Internal Medicine Residency at the same institution and, subsequently, at the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester (MN). He also completed a Hematology-Oncology Fellowship at MD Anderson Cancer Center, a Leukemia and Lymphoma fellowship at the same institution, and a Malignant Hematology fellowship at the Barts Cancer Institute, in London (UK). Dr. Strati is committed to gain further insight into the biology of the lymphoma immune microenvironment, and to manipulate its components in order to develop novel effective therapies and to decrease the toxicity of treatment strategies already available for patients with B-cell lymphoma.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

A Phase I/II Study of the Combination of ALX148, Rituximab and Lenalidomide in Patients with Indolent and Aggressive B-cell Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma

TAP Partner

Kymera Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company founded with the mission to discover, develop, and commercialize transformative therapies while leading the evolution of targeted protein degradation, a transformative new approach to address previously intractable disease targets. Kymera’s initial programs are IRAK4, IRAKIMiD, and STAT3, each of which addresses high impact targets within the IL-1R/TLR or JAK/STAT pathways, providing the opportunity to treat a broad range of immune-inflammatory diseases, hematologic malignancies, and solid tumors.

Program Name(s)

Therapy Acceleration Program

Project Title

A phase 1 study of KT-413, a dual degrader of IRAK4 and IMiD substrates, in patients with DLBCL

A phase 1 study of KT-333, a STAT3 protein degrader, in patients with NHL

TAP Partner

Rgenta Therapeutics is developing a pipeline of oral, small-molecule RNA-targeting medicines with an initial focus on oncology and neurological disorders. Rgenta has a proprietary platform to mine the massive genomics data to identify targetable RNA processing events and to design small-molecule glues to modulate the interactions among the spliceosome, regulatory proteins, and RNAs. 

Rgenta is working closely with LLS TAP to further develop RNA-targeting molecules by supporting preclinical studies with the goal of moving towards clinical development in hematological malignancies. 

Program Name(s)

Therapy Acceleration Program

Project Title

Supporting development of RNA-targeting molecules for blood cancers

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Project Title

Mechanisms of Inducing differentiation in CBFA2T3-GLIS2 positive AML

Weill Cornell Medicine

Selina Chen-Kiang, Ph.D. is professor of pathology, Immunology and microbial pathogenesis at Weill Cornell Medical College.  She has been dedicated to translating fundamental discoveries into innovative therapies that address unmet needs in blood cancers and benefit patients.  With the generous support of an MCL-RI grant from LLS, her team has implemented a ground-breaking strategy that both stops cancer cells from dividing and sensitizes them to killing by partner drugs in clinical trials of mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) with promising results. By following each patient longitudinally using advanced genomic methods, her team has discovered new drug resistant markers and developed strategies to overcome drug resistance.  Ongoing effort is focused on further enhancing the durability and depth of targeted therapy as well as immunotherapy by harnessing the novel cancer-immune cell cross talks they have uncovered in MCL patients, with the goal of finding a cure for MCL and other lymphomas.

Program Name(s)

Mantle Cell Lymphoma Research Initiative

Project Title

Longitudinal functional genomics in mantle cell lymphoma therapy and drug resistance

Northwestern University

I began my scientific career in the Marchesi laboratories (Yale, 1982-1985) and then as an undergraduate under Don Wiley (Harvard, 1986-1988). I entered the Medical Scientist Training Program (1988-1995) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), performing doctoral research with Harold Varmus, at UCSF and the NIH. I defended my thesis at UCSF and completed medical training at Northwestern (1996-1997). I was an Internal Medicine house officer and Hematology/Oncology fellow at Univ of Chicago (UofC, 1997-2003)then stayed on as a UofC faculty member as a physician-scientist, with both research and clinical responsibilities (2003-2023).

Effective April 1, 2023, I have joined the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University as the inaugural director of the Jeff and Marianne Silver Family Blood Cancer Institute of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center. I will also serve as Clinical Director of Cancer Genetics.

I derive synergy between bench research and the bedside to understand disease on a molecular level. This proposal seeks to understand how inherited DNA changes influence the development of bone marrow cancers, with the goal of developing interventions that would prevent cancers in at-risk individuals to make my job as an oncologist obsolete.

Program Name(s)

Discovery

Project Title

CHEK2 as a predisposition gene for clonal hematopoiesis and hematopoietic malignancies