Who We Fund

TAP Partner

ImCheck Therapeutics is designing and developing a new generation of immunotherapeutic antibodies targeting butyrophilins, a novel super-family of immunomodulators. These “first-in-class” activating antibodies may be able to produce superior clinical results as compared to the first-generation of immune checkpoint inhibitors and, when used in combination, to overcome resistance to this group of agents.

Program Name(s)

Therapy Acceleration Program

Project Title

A phase 2 expansion study of ICT01, an anti-BTN3A monoclonal antibody, in combination with azacitidine and venetoclax in patients with AML

Mayo Clinic, Rochester

Grzegorz (Greg) Nowakowski, M.D., is a consultant and a Professor of Oncology and Medicine, Division of Hematology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester,Minnesota, where he also serves as the Aggressive B-cell Lymphoma Program Director, the Chairman of Education,and an Advanced Hematology Fellowship Program Director. Dr. Nowakowski received his MD from the Medical University of Warsaw, Poland. He completed his internal medicine residency at Yale University Medical School -Norwalk Hospital, Norwalk, Connecticut and his fellowship in Hematology and Medical Oncology at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. Dr Nowakowski joined the Mayo Clinic Lymphoma Group in 2006 as a Mayo Foundation Scholar.Heis an alumnus of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) Clinical Research Training Institute and American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Leadership Development Program. Dr. Nowakowski’s research focuses on the molecular classification and biology of lymphoproliferative disorders,new approaches to clinical trial design and novel therapies for lymphoma and hematological disorders. Heis an investigator in University of Iowa/Mayo Clinic Lymphoma Specialized Center of Research Excellence program, where he leads career enhancement program. Dr. Nowakowski has authored over 200 articles and numerous book chapters. Dr.Nowakowski serves as a principal investigator of multiple investigator-initiated and cooperative group clinical trials(ECOG, Alliance) and industry studies and serves and a member of ECOG Lymphoma Core Committee. Dr.Nowakowski also chairs the Lymphoma Committee and Hematological Malignancy Program in the Academic and Community Cancer Research United (ACCRU) network. He currently serves as a vice Chair of ASH Clinical Trial Innovation Subcommittee chair of ASCO Research Community Forum and ASCO Clinical Trial Access and Participation Taskforce. Dr. Nowakowski has served as Voting Member of the Oncology Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Program Name(s)

IMPACT

Project Title

REACH: Recruitment Expansion through community Access to Clinical trials in Hematologic malignancies

University of Colorado Denver, Anschutz Medical Campus

I am a scientist of Indian origin who moved to the US upon completion of a Master’s in Pharmaceutical Biotechnology degree. I obtained my PhD in Cancer Biology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, in the laboratory of Dr. Rob Welner. My PhD project focused on identifying basic mechanisms of drug resistance in blood cancer stem cells. This work culminated in 4 first author and 9 co-author publications. To gain experience in translational research, grant writing and mentoring, I am pursuing postdoctoral studies with Dr. Craig Jordan at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Here, I am leveraging my training in blood cancer and stem cell biology to identify new approaches for targeting malignant stem cells in myelodysplastic syndrome. This training will help me achieve my long-term goal of establishing an independent translational research program to improve outcomes for blood cancer patients and mentor students interested in pursuing a blood cancer research career.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Nicotinamide metabolism is essential for myelodysplastic syndrome stem and progenitor cell function and survival

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

H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute

Gary Reuther, PhD (Professor in the Departments of Molecular Oncology and Malignant Hematology at the Moffitt Cancer Center) earned his PhD from Duke University and did his post-doctoral training with Channing Der (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), where he studied signaling by the RAS oncoprotein and identified novel leukemia oncogenes. His current research centers on JAK2 signaling and novel therapeutic strategies for MPNs. Over the past 20 years, he has obtained research funding from multiple NIH R01 grants, the MPN Research Foundation, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the Department of Defense, and the V Foundation for Cancer Research, and was the recipient of an American Cancer Society Research Scholar Award and an NIH/NCI Howard Temin Award. His experience leading research that led to this funding and successful completion and publication of these projects makes him highly qualified to serve as the PI on the proposed studies.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Novel therapeutic strategies to improve the outcomes of patients with myeloproliferative neoplasms

Washington University in St. Louis

I am currently an Instructor of Hematology at Washington University School of Medicine. I am interested in understanding the genomics of blood cancers and how this disease arises. This interest began as a post-bac researcher at the NIH in Dr. Elliott Margulies’ lab where we developed novel tools for genome assembly. I continued with MD/PhD training at WashU in the laboratory of Dr. Todd Druley, where we developed novel tools for rare variant detection. We leveraged these tools to advance our understanding of clonal hematopoiesis and therapy-related leukemia. This solidified my interest in blood cancers, driving me to pursue hematology/oncology fellowship training and join Dr. Grant Challen’s lab as a post-doc. Building upon my prior work, I am now focused on understanding how oncogenic fusions arise and cause disease. My long-term career goal is to run an independent research lab, leveraging a deeper understanding of leukemogenesis to create novel therapies and diagnostic tools.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Understanding How Hematopoietic Developmental State Determines Oncogenic KMT2A Fusion Formation and Leukemic Potential

The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

I am an assistant professor of oncology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine where I treat patients suffering from leukemias and lymphomas. In my clinical practice, I experience firsthand the lack of treatment options and the poor outcomes in patients with relapsed T cell leukemias and T cell lymphomas. Therefore, my laboratory research focuses on the development of new therapies for the treatment of these T cell cancers. Using my background in T cell biology (Paul et al Immunity 2012, Paul et al Science Signaling 2014) and my collaborators expertise in antibody design, I developed therapies that selectively kill T cell cancers and spare the majority of normal T cells (Paul et al. Sci. Transl. Med. 2021). My goal is to conduct the preclinical validation of the T cell cancer targeting therapies so they can be tested in patients through early phase clinical trials. We hope that our novel therapies will provide new treatment options and improve survival in patients with T cell leukemias and lymphomas.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

TCR directed immunotoxins and antibody drug conjugates for the treatment of T cell malignancies

Columbia University Irving Medical Center

My research interests are the identification of genetic alterations responsible for leukemia and lymphoma development and the elucidation of the mechanisms leading to transformation in lymphoid diseases. My academic training and research experience give me an excellent background in multiple biological disciplines including cellular and molecular biology and genetics. I completed my PhD at the INSERM in France where I demonstrated the cooperation between an activating mutation of Jak3 and trisomy 21 in the development of cutaneous T cell lymphoma. I also identified a major cooperative role for the RAS/MAPK signaling pathway in the development of Down syndrome-associated B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Currently, I am a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University, under the mentorship of Dr. Teresa Palomero, and I study the mechanisms of transformation in Peripheral T-cell lymphoma using multidisciplinary approaches from animal models to transcriptomic and epigenomic analysis.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Role of ID2 in mature T-cell lymphoma

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Dr. Simona Colla is an associate professor in the Department of Leukemia at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Her laboratory works on understanding the mechanisms underpinning the pathogenesis and progression of multiple myeloma (MM) and myelodysplastic syndromes.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Validation of Critical 1q21 Vulnerabilities in multiple myeloma

Medical College of Wisconsin

Nirav Shah, MD, MSHP is currently an Associate Professor of Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Division of Hematology and Oncology, specializing in lymphoma, stem cell transplant, and CAR-T therapy. He graduated with honors and Alpha Omega Alpha honor society membership from University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine in 2008. He then completed his Internal Medicine residency at the Harvard affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital in 2011. Following residency, he went to the University of Pennsylvania where he completed Hematology/Oncology fellowship and received a Master of Science in Health Policy research in 2015. His current focus is the development of dual targeted anti-CD20, anti-CD19 CAR-T cells (CAR20.19) for B-cell malignancies. Results of a Phase 1 trial with CAR20.19 T-cells were published in Nature Medicine in Oct. 2020. Data from that study directed development of three new CAR20.19 clinical trials led by Dr. Shah all actively enrolling patients.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Improving Bispecific CD20/CD19 CAR T-cell Therapy to Overcome Resistance Mechanisms in B-cell Malignancies

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Dr. Qi is a well-trained synthetic chemist, chemical biologist, and biologist with an interdisciplinary background in drug development. His research is focused on designing and developing biologically relevant small molecule inhibitors and degraders of epigenetic protein targets and utilizing these chemical tools to study the translational potential of these targets in cancers, including blood cancer.

Dr. Ken Anderson is well-known physician scientist who studies and treats MM. His research has led to a variety of novel therapies for clinical MM treatment.

Together, this team has brought multiple targets into potential treatment development for MM, including HDACs, KDMs, and RPN13. The complementary expertise between these two PIs will uncover novel biological insights into MM that can bring novel therapies into other hematological malignancies.

Program Name(s)

Discovery

Project Title

Dissect the function of histone demethylase KDM5 on overcoming drug resistance toward immunotherapy in multiple myeloma

Cleveland Clinic Foundation

Jaroslaw P. Maciejewski, MD, PhD, FACP, is Staff Physician in the Cleveland Clinic Department of Hematologic and Oncology, Chairman of the Department of Translational Hematology & Oncology Research at Taussig Cancer Center and Professor at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. Recognized for his scholarly achievement in biomedical research, Dr. Maciejewski is an elected member of The American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI). His areas of expertise include bone marrow failure syndromes and myeloid malignancies. As the recipient of numerous federal and foundation grant awards, Dr. Maciejewski has a distinguished track-record in research including continuity in federal research grant funding from the National Institutes of Health since 2003. His extensive list of publications of over 450 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters demonstrates his success as an accomplished and respected translational physician-scientist.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

HLA Mutations, GvH Resistance and Relapse Following Allogeneic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant