Who We Fund

Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Marco Ruella is a physician-scientist and assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He treats patients with blood cancers and focuses on using immunotherapy, where the body’s own immune system is harnessed to fight cancer. His research looks at why some cancers return after CAR T-cell therapy and aims to design new treatments to prevent this. Dr. Ruella earned his medical degree in Italy and completed advanced training in the U.S. He has received many awards for his work, including from the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Dr. Ruella has published widely, holds multiple patents, and advises companies in cancer immunotherapy. He also founded viTToria Biotherapeutics to help bring new treatments to patients.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Building Upon The Success Of CART19: Safe and Effective Next-Generation CART For Relapsed And Refractory Lymphomas

β-Hydroxybutyrate To Enhance CAR T Cell Immunotherapy Against Hematological Cancers

Columbia

I am an Associate Professor in Pediatric Hematology Oncology and Director of the Pediatric Immunotherapy Program at Columbia University. My work focuses on advancing immune therapies (CAR T cells) for children with cancer. I recently transitioned from Stanford University (2013–2025), where I led early first-in-human CAR T cell trials and helped deliver over 250 CAR-therapies to children with advanced cancer. Recognizing a major gap in data sharing, I founded the Pediatric Real-world CAR Consortium, a collaboration of over 50 pediatric oncology centers that enables large-scale data and sample sharing. Through this effort, we have identified predictors of survival and toxicity, modifiable treatment factors that impact survival, and informed international clinical trials. Given the recent approval of CAR T cells, long-term outcomes remain poorly understood. Our next goal is to study survivorship, late effects, and strategies to improve cure rates while reducing toxicity.

Program Name(s)

Dare to Dream

Project Title

Establishing longitudinal outcomes and clinical prognosticators in pediatric and young adult B-ALL after commercially available CD19-CAR T cells

Winship Cancer Institute

Dr. Jean Koff is an Associate Professor in the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology and Director of the Lymphoma Program’s Translational Research Team at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University. Her clinical expertise in lymphoma is complemented by her research characterizing the immunologic and genetic factors that contribute to poor outcomes in lymphoma patient populations under-represented in most studies, such as African Americans and organ transplant recipients. She serves as an investigator on several team science projects involving multi-institutional cohorts of lymphoma patients with integrated analyses of clinical and molecular data, including the Lymphoma Epidemiology of Outcomes cohort study. Dr. Koff is the 2024 Chair of the Scientific Committee on Lymphoid Neoplasia for the American Society of Hematology. Her work has been funded by the Lymphoma Research Foundation, the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Cancer Society, and the NIH.

Program Name(s)

Specialized Center of Research Program

Project Title

Translating molecular profiles into treatment approaches to target disparities in lymphoma

TAP Partner

Crossbow Therapeutics is a biotechnology company determined to improve the lives of people with cancer by unlocking the therapeutic potential of T-cell receptor (TCR)-mimetic antibodies. The company’s T-Bolt™ therapies are next-generation, easily assembled immunotherapies directed with high precision at previously unreachable cancer cell targets.

Program Name(s)

Therapy Acceleration Program

Project Title

A phase 1 study of CBX-250, a TCR-mimetic antibody, in patients with AML, MDS or CMML

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Dr. Brody is Director of the Lymphoma Immunotherapy Program at Mount Sinai and a member of the Depart of Immunology. He has developed a robust clinical program and a translational Cancer Immunotherapy Lab which investigates basic and applied tumor immunology to develop novel therapies for lymphomas and CLL with results published in top-tier journals including Nature Medicine and Cancer Discovery.  Dr. Brody has pioneered a therapeutic vaccine approach—in situ vaccination—that induces anti-tumor immunity and regression of tumors throughout the body with clinical results published primarily for Follicular Lymphoma. Recently, his group discovered a novel approach ‘potentiating bystander killnig’ to improve immunotherapies by preventing a common escape mechanism that tumors use to evade CAR-T and bispecific antibody therapies.

Dr. Brody’s research receives funding from numerous grantors e.g. the NIH, Cancer Research Institute, Damon Runyon Foundation, and the Lymphoma Research Foundation.

Program Name(s)

Research Accelerator for Follicular Lymphoma

Project Title

Understanding and targeting rare Ag–(CD19/CD20–) Follicular Lymphoma cells to prevent post-immunotherapy antigen escape

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

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

Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Dr. Savona is the Head of Hematology, Cellular Therapy and Stem Cell Transplant, the Beverly and George Rawlings Director of Hematologic Malignancies Research, and Professor of Internal Medicine and Cancer Biology at Vanderbilt University.

He is a physician scientist specializing in the development of experimental therapies for myeloid malignancies. He has led development and approval of several novel treatments targeting the proteosome, BCL2 family proteins, PI3 kinase delta, the JAK/STAT pathway, and various epigenetic agents. He studies clonal hematopoiesis (CH) and experimental opportunities to alter the progression of CH to myeloid neoplasia and/or vascular disease. He has been involved medical research for over 20 years and has published over 100 manuscripts in major academic journals including: Cancer Discovery, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Nature Medicine, Blood, Cell Stem Cell, Lancet Oncology, Lancet Haematology, JAMA, and Nature Reviews.

He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom for the USAF.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

IMPACT

Project Title

Manipulation of cell fate in myeloid disease

Reaching out to underserved & minority patients with hematological diseases in the southeastern US

Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Liling Wan is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She received a B.S. in Biological Sciences and Biotechnology from Tsinghua University and a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Princeton University. She conducted postdoctoral research at Rockefeller University where she studied chromatin regulators in cancer. The Wan lab studies basic gene regulatory mechanisms and how these mechanisms are dysregulated in cancer, with the goal of harnessing these insights for therapeutics. Her research has revealed how chromatin “reader” proteins impact gene regulation in cancer such as acute myeloid leukemia and led to early drug development efforts targeting these mechanisms. Dr. Wan has been recognized for her innovative and impactful research through numerous awards including AACR NextGen Star, NIH Pathway to Independence Award, the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, and was recently named a Pew-Stewart Scholar, V Foundation Scholar, and ASH Scholar.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Epigenetic Mechanisms in Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

I was an endlessly curious child who wanted to become a scientist. But it was my own experience as a teenager in a Pediatric Hospital Unit that shaped my scientific passion, where I became friends with children affected by leukemia. I was shocked by the terrible implications of this disease and became determined to design new therapies to fight it.

Inspired by this experience, I studied cancer biology at top institutions across Europe and the US. I wanted to understand how leukemia originated, and how it evolved to become an aggressive and hard-to-treat disease. 

As a PhD student at the University of Oxford, I developed new sequencing technologies to understand how leukemia arises and evolves inside each individual cell. My deep passion for leukemia research later brought me to Dana Farber Cancer Institute, where I am currently studying the earliest molecular changes that predispose to leukemia, aiming to prevent leukemia from developing in the first place.

Project Title

Characterizing the epigenetic mechanisms of inflammation-mediated fitness advantage in clonal hematopoiesis

Baylor College of Medicine

Dr. Rouce is a pediatric oncologist and physician scientist whose clinical research focuses on difficult-to-treat blood cancers, specifically how to harness the immune system to attack them. She has spent the past 12 years in the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Texas Children’s Hospital leading a research program translating genetically engineered immune cells to first-in-human immunotherapy trials. She has significant experience in every aspect of clinical trial development and in addition to serving as principal investigator on CAR-T trials for blood cancers, has served as Project Leader for projects for the NIH Lymphoma SPORE, Blood Cancer United Specialized Center of Research, and Stand Up to Cancer. She leads health equity and disparities initiatives locally and nationally and is dedicated to addressing access barriers to novel cancer clinical trials for children, adolescents/young adults, underrepresented minorities, patients with limited resources and those with geographic constraints.

Program Name(s)

Academic Clinical Trials Program (ACT)

Project Title

Novel CD7 CAR T-cells for refractory T-cell malignancies affecting pediatric and AYA patients

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 Blood Cancer United, the Wehrheim Professorship in cancer research, and the NCI Outstanding Investigator award.

Program Name(s)

Discovery

Specialized Center of Research Program

Project Title

Therapeutic targeting of AML stem cells 2023

Modeling LSC heterogeneity at unprecedented resolution in AML