Who We Fund

Weill Cornell Medicine

Dr. Cerchietti is physician scientist dedicated to translational research in hematology oncology. His lab conduct mechanistic studies on the genetic, metabolic, and epigenetic regulation of lymphoma and microenvironment cells. Therapeutic approaches developed from his lab have been successfully translated to patients in investigator-initiated to cooperative group phase 3 clinical trials. Dr. Cerchietti also developed biomarkers to improve the precision of these interventions. Successfully translated research includes the concept of epigenetic priming to improve chemotherapy and immunotherapy as well as the discovering of the mechanism of action of XPO1 inhibitors in lymphomas contributing to gain FDA approval. A major focus of his lab is the study of the microenvironment to provide novel therapeutic targets as well as patient selection biomarkers (the “LME” classification) to improve the precision of therapies and increase disease curability.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Targeting the microenvironment to increase immunity and immunotherapy response in DLBCL

Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

Jalpa Doshi, PhD, is a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Director of Value Based Insurance Design Initiatives at the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics. Her research program aims to advance our understanding of how pharmaceuticals can be better accessed and utilized in the health care system to improve health outcomes while balancing costs. She has been a national leader in applying powerful health economics, outcomes research, and policy methods to address issues related to pharmaceutical access, costs, outcomes, and value. Her research has received widespread attention from the media including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and has directly influenced policies of public and private insurers. For example, she was the first to produce rigorous empirical research advocating for the closure of the “donut hole” (executed under the Affordable Care Act) and institution of an annual out-of-pocket maximum with “smoothing” (executed under the Inflation Reduction Act) under Medicare Part D. Her work documenting negative consequences of cost sharing among veterans was cited in arguments that kept the VA from increasing drug copayments. Her research on the burden of prior authorization policies for novel cholesterol-lowering agents was used to work with national insurers to appropriately reduce their policy restrictions. In recognition of her work, she has received numerous awards and honors from national and international organizations.

Program Name(s)

Equity in Access

Project Title

Impact of Insurance Type and Cost Sharing on Equity in Access to Oral Anticancer Medications for Blood Cancers

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Dr. Keisuke Ito is an Associate Professor of Cell Biology and Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he has also served as the Director of Scientific Resources at the Stem Cell Institute. After his postdoctoral training, first at Keio University, where he also completed his clinical training, and then at Harvard, he joined the Einstein faculty in 2012. Dr. Ito’s team has focused on advancing our understanding of the regulatory pathways controlling the equilibrium of stem cells. At the core of his work is the process of stem cell division, and the balance between self-renewal and differentiation, which directly impacts tissue homeostasis and the development of hematological malignancies. Dr. Ito is devoted to targeting mitophagy, a mitochondrial quality-control process, as a therapeutic strategy, and has cut a path along the leading edge of research into the role of Ten-eleven translocation in the pathogenesis of myelodysplastic syndrome.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Targeting mitophagy of leukemia stem cells for therapy

Baylor College of Medicine

I am currently a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Margaret (“Peggy”) Goodell’s lab at Baylor College of Medicine. Before joining her lab in April of 2021, I received my Ph.D. at the University of Tokyo, Japan. My Ph.D. thesis work has established a therapeutic approach to hematopoietic tumors targeting RUNX1 in the lab of Dr. Toshio Kitamura and Dr. Susumu Goyama. The work spanned bioengineering and computational biology and has the potential to save patients if the approach is introduced to the clinic. During my PhD., I earned the Dean’s Award (2021) and the American Society of Hematology the Abstract Achievement Award (2019). On a personal note, the primary motivation behind my pursuit of a career in blood cancer research is that I was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) in high school. I was fortunate to be cured by a bone marrow transplant. Furthermore, having been a cancer patient myself, I currently participate in providing mental health support for cancer patients.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Uncovering mechanisms of DNMT3A stability in hematologic malignancies

Baylor College of Medicine

My professional goal is to improve outcomes for children with cancer and blood disorders. I am Professor of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine and Co-Director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Lymphoma and Histiocytosis Programs. My research group focuses on research efforts to develop and test improved therapeutic strategies for children with histiocytic disorders, lymphoproliferative disorders and lymphomas. Our research in Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH) has contributed to redefinition of the disease as a myeloproliferative neoplasia.

I am also co-founder of the North American Consortium for Histiocytosis Research (NACHO) that now includes over 60 institutions. With support from the LLS Translational Research Program, we are moving discoveries beyond the bench to clinical trials. NACHO-COBI is the first prospective trial testing MAPK pathway inhibition in children with LCH and related disorders that is now open in the NACHO network. We hope that results from this trial and correlative biology studies will improve survival and quality of life for patients with LCH

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Testing targeted therapy in LCH

Weill Cornell Medicine

Dan Landau, MD, PhD is Associate Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and a Core Member of the New York Genome Center. He is an hemato-oncologist whose long-term goal is to develop novel approaches to address cancer evolution as a central obstacle to cure. His research group is funded by the NCI, NHLBI and NHGRI, and his work has led to recognition and awards including Stand Up to Cancer, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, Vallee Scholar, and the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Defining the role of DNA methylation modifier mutations in reshaping blood differentiation topology

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Reina Takeda, M.D., Ph. D., is a hematologist and currently a Research Fellow in Pediatric Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI). After receiving her MD in Japan, she completed her clinical training in internal medicine and hematology/oncology. She received her PhD from the University of Tokyo in 2020 for her basic research on epigenetic dysregulation in myeloid malignancies and joined Dr. Scott Armstrong's lab at DFCI in 2022. Her clinical experience as a physician in Japan has inspired her to develop a deeper understanding of the pathogenesis and molecular biology of hematologic malignancies. Her research interests focus on how oncogenic proteins cause transcriptional dysregulation in hematologic malignancies and contribute to their pathogenesis. As a hematology/oncology physician-scientist, her research goal is to translate basic scientific knowledge from the bench to the bedside by identifying novel therapeutics that target key regulatory pathways.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Dr. Robert Orlowski, the Principal Investigator of this proposal, serves as the Florence Maude Thomas Cancer Research Professor and Director of the Myeloma Section at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and is the Deputy Chair of the Department of Lymphoma & Myeloma. Also, Dr. Orlowski serves as the Chair of the SWOG Barlogie/Salmon Myeloma Committee, which is part of the National Clinical Trials Network that conducts studies to advance novel therapies for myeloma, and to expand our understanding of its biology. In the laboratory arena, Dr. Orlowski is a physician scientist whose focus has been on bench-to-bedside research that develops and validates novel therapies to improve patient outcomes, and focuses on drug resistance mechanisms that may serve as predictive biomarkers for response. His past work has included leading roles in the development of the proteasome inhibitors bortezomib and carfilzomib, as well as the monoclonal antibodies daratumumab and elotuzumab.

Program Name(s)

Specialized Center of Research Program

Translational Research Program

Project Title

SCOR in High-Risk Plasma Cell Dyscrasias

Targeting HSP70 to Immune Effector Cells to Overcome the Immune Suppressive Myeloma Microenvironment

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

I am a Research Scholar in the laboratory of Dr. Omar Abdel-Wahab at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. I obtained my Bachelor’s degree at East China University of Science and Technology and completed my PhD training at the Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health in the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences under the mentorship of Dr. Lan Wang. During my graduate studies, I identified an important role of the histone methyltransferase SETD2 in the transformation of patients with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) to acute myeloid leukemia (AML). As an LLS Special Fellow, I will focus on developing novel CAR-T cell therapy targeting cell surface expression of the RNA helicase U5 snRNP200. Moreover, I will explore the mechanistic basis for cell surface localization of U5 snRNP200 on AML cells. I hope that my work has immediate therapeutic potential for the future treatment of AML while shedding important novel insights into the pathobiology of AML.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Targeting the cell surface U5 snRNP complex as a novel immunotherapy for AML

TAP Partner

Immunitas is a single cell genomics-based therapeutics company focused on immunology that is advancing multiple programs to the clinic. Immunitas’ programs are derived from their platform, a cross-functional, highly integrated, single cell genomics approach that enables rapid target identification and validation in parallel with antibody discovery and engineering.

Program Name(s)

Therapy Acceleration Program

Project Title

A phase 1/2 study of IMT-009, an antibody targeting CD161, in patients with advanced solid tumors or lymphomas

The University of New South Wales (UNSW)

Dr. Ashwin Unnikrishnan is a cancer researcher and Principal Investigator of the Molecular Mechanisms in Leukemia Laboratory based at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

The Unnikrishnan lab investigates the molecular alterations underlying hematopoietic cancers, primarily Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS) and Acute Myeloid Leukemia. The group utilizes a range of cutting-edge technologies and a multi-disciplinary approach, merging lab-based experimentation with computational data analysis techniques, to make fundamental discoveries. An overarching goal of the lab is to lay the foundation for more effective treatments through an improved understanding of the molecular changes that underlie leukemia.

Dr. Unnikrishnan received his Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle, WA, and his undergraduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis, MO.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Beyond azacitidine: investigating new therapeutic strategies for the treatment of MDS

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Dr. Michael G. Kharas is a Member of the Molecular Pharmacology Program at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (New York, NY, USA) and member of Center for Hematological Malignancies. Dr. Kharas finished his postdoctoral training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and studied how signaling pathways alters stem cell regulation with Drs. Gary Gilliland and George Daley. In 2011 he started his laboratory at MSK and focused on the controllers of cellular fate in the blood. His laboratory has uncovered new RNA regulators and how they modulate self-renewal, cell-fate decisions, and differentiation in both normal blood development and in myeloid leukemia. Dr. Kharas has received recognition including the Leukemia Lymphoma Society Scholar Award and American Society of Hematology Scholar Award. His laboratory is developing inhibitors that block the function of RNA regulators as a new therapeutic strategy in leukemia.

Program Name(s)

Discovery

Project Title

Discovering the function and targeting dysregulated nuclear condensates in myeloid leukemia