Who We Fund

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

Martin Dreyling is Professor of Medicine and head of the lymphoma programme at the Department of Medicine III, LMU Hospital Munich. He studied at the Universities of Düsseldorf, Giessen, Tübingen and Würzburg, and completed his clinical training at the Universities of Bonn, Münster, Göttingen and Munich. In addition, he was visiting scientist at the University of Chicago.

His scientific focus is on the molecular basis of malignant transformation, cell cycle dysregulation and secondary genetic alterations as well as biological prognostic factors in malignant lymphoma. He is also interested in innovative therapeutic approaches, including molecular targeted approaches like inhibitors of the B-cell receptor pathway and immunological approaches.

Prof. Dreyling is coordinator of the European MCL Network and president of the German Lymphoma Alliance as well as EHA executive board member. He has co-authored numerous scientific papers and abstracts in international peer-reviewed journals.

Program Name(s)

Mantle Cell Lymphoma Research Initiative

Project Title

MULTIlayer Predictive models for relapsed MCL after ibrutinib as first line therapY (MULTIPLY)

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

My name is Ivan Odak and I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Brody lab. I am an accomplished researcher with 20 authored papers, 9 of which as first or last author. I obtained my PhD summa cum laude from Hannover Biomedical Research School in Germany, where I also worked as a postdoc in the lab of Reinhold Förster. Though challenging, I find science primarily enjoyable, and I like using my skills to tackle important questions in the field of immuno-therapy. The colleagues see me as tireless force in the workplace and I often use my positive attitude and energy to motivate others. My ultimate goal is to establish my own lab dedicated to research and discovery of cancer immunotherapies.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Prevention of antigen escape by modulation of off-target tumor killing in T cells

Houston Methodist Research Institute

I am a translational tumor immunologist. I have 30 years of experience as a well-funded and published researcher and am one of the leading investigators in the fields of tumor immunology in myeloma and other cancers. My laboratory has been working on: (1) characterizing myeloma- and tumor-specific T cells and their subsets and examining their functions, (2) identifying novel myeloma-associated antigens and better methods for immunotherapy, (3) investigating the cross-talk between the tumor microenvironment (TME) and immune system, (4) conducting clinical trials to evaluate the efficacy of immunizing patients with idiotype or dendritic cell-based vaccines, and (5) exploring immunotherapies using myeloma antigens such as DKK1. Our recent research focuses on: (a) developing novel therapeutic mAbs and CAR-T cells for cancers, (b) identifying T-cell subsets that have potent antitumor effects after adoptive transfer, and (c) identifying TME components that induce tumor drug resistance.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Developing Novel CAR-T Cell Therapy For Hematologic Malignancies

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Dr. Letai is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He began his studies in apoptosis and hematologic malignancies as a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Stanley Korsmeyer. He then started his own laboratory at Dana-Farber in 2005 and became an LLS Scholar in 2008. His studies in understanding how BCL-2 family members regulate the cell death pathway of apoptosis were instrumental in the translation of the BCL-2 inhibitor venetoclax to the clinic, where it is now FDA approved for the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML). His laboratory has been investigating how immune cells used in cancer immunotherapy use apoptosis pathways to kill cancer cells, and how increasing apoptosis signaling in cancer cells might benefit immunotherapy. He is also investigating how reducing apoptosis signaling in immune cells used for immunotherapy might make them work better in cancer patients.

Program Name(s)

Discovery

Project Title

Interrogating T-cell apoptotic priming to improve CAR-T persistence in treatment of lymphoid malignancies

TAP Partner

Enterome is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing breakthrough immunomodulatory drugs for the treatment of cancer and immune diseases. Enterome’s pioneering approach to drug discovery is based on its unique and powerful bacterial Mimicry drug discovery platform, allowing it to analyze and uncover new biological insights from the millions of gut bacterial proteins in constant cross-talk with the human body. Its first-in-class small protein and peptide drug candidates modulate the immune system by closely mimicking the structure, effect or actions of specific antigens, hormones, or cytokines. 

Program Name(s)

Therapy Acceleration Program

Project Title

A phase 2 trial of EO2463, a novel microbial-derived peptide therapeutic vaccine, as monotherapy, and in combination with lenalidomide and rituximab, for treatment of patients with indolent NHL

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

Montefiore Medical Center

Coming Soon.

Program Name(s)

Special Grants

Project Title

Metabolically Optimized, Non-cytotoxic Low Dose Weekly Decitabine/Venetoclax in MDS and AML

Moffitt Cancer Center

Eric Padron, MD is an Associate Member and Scientific Director of the Department of Hematology at Moffitt Cancer Center (MCC). He completed a hematology oncology fellowship and was recruited to MCC in 2013. Dr. Padron’s research focus has centered on studying clonal hematopoiesis (CH) and chronic myeloid neoplasms across the translational research spectrum. Importantly, he has published seminal work establishing key biologic features, novel treatments, and clinical trials in CMML. Further, Dr. Padron is an R37 MERIT awardee from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for his work in chronic myelomonocytic leukemia and has published more than 175 peer reviewed articles describing advances in myeloid malignancies and hematologic conditions, including CH. Dr. Padron is among the few physician-scientists with experience both in leading multi-institution trials and a successful NCI funded laboratory making him uniquely suited to lead this proposal.

Program Name(s)

CMML Initiative

Project Title

Advancing the therapeutic landscape for Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia (CMML)

Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University

Dr. Majeti is Professor of Medicine, Chief of the Division of Hematology, and Member of the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He is a board-certified hematologist. While at Stanford, he completed post-doctoral training in the laboratory of Irving Weissman, MD, where he investigated acute myeloid leukemia (AML) stem cells and therapeutic targeting with anti-CD47 antibodies. Dr. Majeti directs an active NIH-funded laboratory that focuses on the molecular characterization and therapeutic targeting of leukemia stem cells in human hematologic disorders, particularly AML, and has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles.

Program Name(s)

Discovery

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Clonal Evolution of Pre-Leukemic Hematopoietic Stem Cells in Human Myeloid Malignancies

Personalized Metabolic Targeting of Epigenetic AML Mutations Through the Alpha-Ketoglutarate Pathway

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

I performed my undergraduate studies at the University of Cambridge, UK, graduating in 2012 with a BA and MSci in Natural Sciences (Biochemistry). For my PhD I joined the lab of Adam Mead at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine in Oxford, UK, where I worked on the role of the transcriptional regulators EZH2 and RUNX1 in hematological disease. My PhD work was published in Cancer Cell (Booth et al., 2018), and I was awarded the institute’s Ita Askonas Prize in 2016 and Radcliffe Department of Medicine Graduate Prize in 2019. I graduated with a DPhil in Medical Sciences from the University of Oxford in 2018. I then moved to Boston, MA to join the lab of Andy Lane at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where I have been investigating fusions of the MYB transcription factor in Blastic Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cell Neoplasm. To support this work, I was awarded a 2-year Postdoctoral Fellowship from the European Molecular Biology Organization in 2020.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Mechanisms of Pathogenesis by MYB Fusions in Blastic Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cell Neoplasm

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Dr. Lakshmi Nayak currently serves as Director of the Center for Central Nervous System (CNS) Lymphoma at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. She is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. She received her medical degree from Grant Medical College in Mumbai, India. She completed her residency at New York Presbyterian Hospital/ Cornell campus, and fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Her research includes development of novel therapies through preclinical and clinical studies for management of brain tumors including primary CNS lymphoma. She has developed several phase I and II trials using combination of molecular targeted agents and immunotherapies including checkpoint inhibitors and CAR T cells for treatment of CNS lymphomas. She leads the international neurologic assessment in neuro-oncology (NANO) effort in collaboration with key leaders in neuro-oncology which led to the development of a standardized outcome-assessment scale to objectively evaluate neurologic function in patients with brain tumors.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

PD1 blockade alone and in combination with BTK/ITK inhibition in patients with refractory and recurrent primary central nervous system lymphoma

Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University

I completed medical school at the University of Goettingen, Germany and performed laboratory research at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and the Charité University hospital in Berlin, for which I received a doctorate from the University of Berlin. I then moved to Munich to undergo clinical training in Hematology/Oncology at the University of Munich, where I was co-investigator for several clinical trials studying treatments for patients with leukemia. Since 2017 I have been a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Ravi Majeti at Stanford where we study how healthy blood stem cells evolve into leukemia. The career development award I received from the LLS will allow me to better study how ASXL1, which is frequently mutated in blood cancers, leads to transformation of healthy blood cells into leukemia and how we can develop effective therapies. The support by the LLS is crucial to this work and I am deeply honored to have received their support.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

The role of truncating ASXL1 mutations in disease initiation and progression of human myeloid malignancies