Who We Fund

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Anita Kumar, MD is an Associate Attending at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center where she specializes in mantle cell lymphoma. Dr. Kumar leads the Memorial Sloan Kettering mantle cell lymphoma research program. She serves as a principal investigator for a number of clinical trials studying novel therapies for the treatment of mantle cell lymphoma and novel clinical applications of minimal residual disease assessment. She completed her undergraduate studies in Biochemical Sciences at Harvard College and medical school at Northwestern University. She then completed her internship and residency at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and subsequently completed her hematology/oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Novel Immunotherapy Combinations in Relapsed, Refractory Mantle Cell Lymphoma

Washington University in St. Louis

John F. DiPersio MD, PhD is the Golman Professor of Medicine and Director of The Center for Gene and Cellular Immunotherapy at the Washington University School of Medicine. His research has focused on targeting key elements of the hematopoietic niche for optimal stem cell mobilization and chemosensitization, mitigating GvHD in T cell replete transplants, understanding the genomic alterations in AML, and developing and testing in the clinic novel therapeutics and immuno-therapeutics, including cellular therapies, for the treatment of AML, ALL, T/B-NHL and multiple myeloma. Dr. DiPersio was instrumental in the development and FDA approval of Plerixafor, Motixafortide, and Ruxolitinib. He is the recipient of multiple awards and was past president of the ASTCT and member of the NCI Board of Scientific Counselors. He has authored or co-authored more than 490 publications, is a co-founder of two companies (WUGEN and Magenta) and holds multiple patents.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

KT1, a novel NK trispecific antibody for the treatment of AML and MDS

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

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

Improving CAR T-cell Therapy Efficacy in Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia by Optimizing Design and Placement

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

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

Columbia University Medical Center

I’m a Professor of Medicine and the Director of the Multiple Myeloma and Amyloidosis Program at Columbia University. I received my medical and doctorate degrees from Humboldt University. My postdoctoral training included residency and fellowship at Humboldt University and a research fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Before joining the faculty at Columbia University, I was the Director of the Multiple Myeloma Program at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.

I’m an active translational researcher, serving as principal investigator for many clinical trials, including investigator-initiated studies for multiple myeloma and AL amyloidosis. My translational research focuses on the identification of novel targets for the treatment of multiple myeloma, myeloma bone disease, and amyloidosis. My research is funded by multiple RO1s and awards. As a frequent lecturer, I regularly present at annual meetings of the ASH and ASCO. I have also published over 100 original articles, editorials, chapters in such prestigious journals as JCO, JCI, Blood, and Cancer Research, etc

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Targeting the MMP-13/PD-1H signaling axis for multiple myeloma bone disease and immunosuppression

The Jackson Laboratory

Jennifer Trowbridge is an Associate Professor at The Jackson Laboratory, where she has had her independent laboratory since 2012, and is adjunct faculty at Tufts University School of Medicine and the University of Maine. She received her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Western Ontario in 2006 and completed postdoctoral training with Dr. Stuart Orkin at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Trowbridge’s research interests span hematopoiesis, stem cell biology, aging, and cancer biology. The current focus of her laboratory is on cell-intrinsic and cell-extrinsic processes underlying hematopoietic stem cell dysregulation in age-related clonal hematopoiesis and myeloid malignancies. She is a Scholar of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and past recipient of the Janet Rowley Award from the International Society for Experimental Hematology, the V Foundation V Scholar Award, American Society of Hematology Scholar Award, and the Ellison Medical Foundation New Scholar Award in Aging.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Discovery of Aging-Driven Mechanisms Causing Clonal Hematopoiesis (CH) and its Progression to Hematological Malignancy

Washington University in St. Louis

Dr. Challen is currently an Associate Professor in the Division of Oncology at Washington University School of Medicine (St. Louis). His laboratory research is at the interface of stem cell biology and blood cancer, and aims to determine how disruption of the epignenome changes the fate of HSCs and ultimately leads to the development of hematopoietic disorders. He was the first to describe how mutations in the gene DNMT3A regulates the balance of HSC self-renewal and differentiation as a first step to development of AML. His lab aims to develop mutation-specific therapies to inhibit CH clones as a mechanism of blood cancer prevention.

Dr. Challen is investigating how mutations in genes that alter the epigenome alter the function of blood-forming hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), leading to a condition known as clonal hematopoiesis (CH) and predispose for future development of blood diseases such as myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), acute myeloid leukemia (AML)and T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL).

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Synergism of cell-intrinsic and cell-extrinsic factors in the clonal evolution of pre-malignant HSCs

Precision Medicine For DNMT3A-Mutant T-cell ALL

Monash University

Professor Jake Shortt is a clinician scientist who is co-appointed by Monash Health as Director of Clinical Haematology and by Monash University as the Head of Haematology Research at the School of Clinical Sciences. Monash Health provides lymphoma services to the largest Australian healthcare network in the Australian state of Victoria. He is also an Honorary Clinical Professor at the Sir Peter MacCallum Department of Oncology, University of Melbourne.

Professor Shortt is group leader of the 'Blood Cancer Therapeutics Laboratory' at Monash, seeking to discover and translate new lymphoma treatments to the clinic. As a clinician scientist his research covers the full translational spectrum from scientific discovery to advanced clinical trials and registry initiatives. For more than a decade his research has focussed on poor-risk lymphoid cancers, particularly those hallmarked by activation of a gene called 'MYC' which features in some of the most aggressive lymphomas.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Exploiting escape from Y-inactivation as a synthetic dependency in MYC-driven lymphoma

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, LLS 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

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Dr. Mark Murakami is a physician-scientist dedicated to advancing curative treatments for follicular lymphoma. Based in the Division of Hematologic Neoplasia at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Dr. Murakami leads a research group focused on understanding how minute numbers of lymphoma cells survive the initial effect of treatment, persist even when patients are in clinical remission, and later expand to cause relapse. Eradication of these rare cells, called minimal residual disease, is felt to be the key to curing follicular lymphoma. Dr. Murakami has dedicated his career to developing methods for tracking, isolating, and analyzing minimal residual disease and understanding how these cells evade pharmacologic therapy as well as the anti-lymphoma immune response. He uses this information to devise novel treatments for rigorous evaluation – first in the laboratory and eventually in clinical trials run by clinical colleagues – that we hope will cure follicular lymphoma.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Exploiting tumor-immune dynamics to inform curative combination therapy for follicular lymphoma