Who We Fund

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

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

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

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Coming soon.

Program Name(s)

Specialized Center of Research Program

Project Title

Translational Discovery in Peripheral T-Cell Lymphomas

Van Andel Research Institute

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Epigenetics at Van Andel Institute. My research is focused on epigenetic regulation of gene expression during blood cell formation and in the pathogenesis of blood cancer. I obtained PhD in Biochemistry from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2001 and joined Dr. Joseph Lipsick’s laboratory at Stanford University for my postdoctoral training, where I became interested in blood cancer research. In 2008, I joined MD Anderson Cancer Center as a research track Assistant Professor, where I made seminal discoveries of the ENL protein as a novel histone acetylation reader and an attractive new therapeutic target for acute leukemias. In 2018, I started my independent lab at Van Andel Institute studying epigenetic regulation of gene expression in blood cancers. The overarching goal of my research is to understand and target ENL in acute leukemias. My long-term research goal is to translate our discoveries at bench to help leukemia patients in the clinic.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Investigating and targeting the histone acetylation reader protein ENL in acute leukemias

TAP Partner

Dimericon is a private biotech company focused on exploring crosslinked helix dimers (Dimericons) as therapeutics and templates for small molecule development. Dimericon’s technology targets hard-to-drug intracellular protein-protein interactions using rationally designed mimetics of helix dimers. The Seed round of financing will support preclinical studies to further develop the current cFLIP inhibitor lead compound, DMRX1004, to be an IND ready clinical candidate in hematological malignancies.

Program Name(s)

Therapy Acceleration Program

Project Title

Supporting development of dimericons (crosslinked helix dimers) for blood cancers

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Dr. Michael Green is an Associate Professor and Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Lymphoma & Myeloma at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Green has led ground-breaking studies analyzing primary samples from patients receiving CAR T cell therapy to identify cellular features associated with outcome and both acute and chronic toxicities. Dr. Green has led the development of a large patient derived xenograft (PDX) repository at MD Anderson that includes models from post-CAR T relapse tumors that serve as important model systems for this study.

Program Name(s)

Discovery

Project Title

Investigating the role of CREBBP mutations and epigenetic crosstalk in B-cell lymphoma

Multiplexed epigenome engineering of solutions to major CAR T-cell barriers

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

Project Title

Cotargeting oncogenic protein translation and apoptosis in acute myeloid leukemia

OHSU Knight Cancer Institute

Samantha Tauchmann Ph.D. is a postdoc at the Oregon Health & Science University. She received a B.S. in Molecular Life Sciences from Maastricht University in the Netherlands and her M.Sc. in Biomedical Sciences from the Transnational University Limburg. She completed her PhD under the mentorship of Prof. Dr. Jürg Schwaller at the University Children`s Hospital Basel in Switzerland, where she investigated the role of the methyltransferase NSD1 and the key erythroid transcription factor, GATA1, in erythroleukemia. Dr. Tauchmann joined the Maxson laboratory in February 2023. Her postdoctoral studies are focused on uncovering how SETBP1 mutations contribute to leukemia by modulating the function of methyltransferases. With a strong commitment to understanding blood cell development and leukemia biology, Dr. Tauchmann aspires to identify new therapeutics for SETBP1-mutant leukemias. Her long-term goal is to run an academic laboratory focused on epigenetic dysregulation in blood cancers.

Project Title

Histone methyltransferases as key dependencies in SETBP1-mutant leukemias

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

I am a Postdoctoral Fellow with a strong background in malignant hematology research. My work focusses on identifying targetable metabolic vulnerabilities in aggressive leukemias in which effective treatment regimens are limited. I completed my PhD under the mentorship of Professor Ricky Johnstone at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia, where I discovered that FLT3-ITD mutations, among the most common in acute myeloid leukemia (AML), promote the biosynthesis of the amino acid serine. Genetic or pharmacological ablation of serine biosynthesis was selectively lethal to FLT3-ITD-mutant AML cells and synergized with cytarabine, the standard of care chemotherapy agent. This work was published in Cancer Discovery in 2021. My postdoctoral work unifies and builds on my interests and expertise in AML model generation and characterization, large-scale genetic screening, transcription, epigenetics, cellular metabolism, and use of in vivo models for therapeutic validation.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Metabolic Regulation of Leukemic Cell Fate

UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center

I am a first-generation college graduate with a Master’s degree in Chemistry and Ph.D. in Biochemistry. My long-term career goal is to lead my own research group focused on understanding key immunological pathways by which the human body fights infection and to develop effective therapies that target blood cancers. During my research career thus far, I have gained a unique repertoire with expertise in chemical biology, biochemistry, and molecular biology with broad knowledge in immunology, cancer biology, and virology. Currently, I am training at the University of North Carolina's Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center under the mentorship of Blossom Damania who is a leader in the fields of viral oncogenesis and viral immunology. As many people have had the misfortune of personal or family experience with blood cancers, myself included, I am devoted to advancing my training and progressing research in this field to help alleviate the burden of these diseases.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Elucidating the role of FAM72A in EBV-driven B cell lymphomagenesis

Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University

Dr. Levy is the Robert K. Summy and Helen K. Summy Professor of Medicine and director of the Lymphoma Program at Stanford University School of Medicine. He is also the associate director of translational science for the Stanford Cancer Institute. For more than 25 years his research has focused on monoclonal antibodies and the study of malignant lymphoma, currently using the tools of immunology and molecular biology to develop a better understanding of the initiation and progression of the malignant process. He was the first to successfully treat cancer with a monoclonal antibody, and went on to help develop rituximab (Rituxan®) for the treatment of patients diagnosed with lymphomas. He is using lymphocyte receptors as targets for new therapies for lymphoma, and he is currently conducting clinical trials of in situ therapeutic vaccination. Dr. Levy is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Program Name(s)

Discovery

Special Grants

Project Title

In vivo generation of Chimeric Antigen Receptor cells to treat hemopoietic malignancies

Stanford

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