Who We Fund

TAP Partner

Auron is a platform-powered company targeting cell-state plasticity to improve patient outcomes in oncology and inflammatory disease. Auron uses AI and machine learning to compare cell states and identify novel drug targets, optimal development models, and biomarkers to facilitate proper patient selection, ultimately accelerating the development of effective and durable therapies. 

Program Name(s)

Therapy Acceleration Program

Project Title

A phase 1 study of AUTX-703, a KAT2A/B degrader, in patients with AML or MDS

The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

I am an NIH-funded physician scientist with a scientific and clinical focus on cutaneous lymphomas. We have utilized high-dimensional genomic, epigenetic, and immunological approaches to elucidate the immunobiology of multiple cutaneous T and B cell lymphomas. We utilize a combination of human and mouse models as well as a number of unbiased approaches including whole genome sequencing, bulk and single cell RNA and ATAC-Seq, epigenetic assays such as ATAC-Seq, CUT&RUN, and HiCHIP, as well as spectral flow and multimodal CITE-Seq. These efforts have led to manuscripts published in Nature, Nature Cancer, Cancer Discovery, and Blood. These efforts have been funded by an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the Damon Runyon Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and most recently the Mark Foundation for Cancer Research.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Identification of novel therapeutic strategies for aggressive subtypes of CTCL

Stanford University

Dr. Kathleen Sakamoto is Professor of Pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine. She has been studying the causes of AML and developing new therapies for the past 30 years. Her research funded by the LLS currently focuses on repurposing a drug used to treat tapeworms, niclosamide, for children with relapsed/refractory AML. Niclosamide is an FDA approved drug and is well tolerated in children. Dr. Sakamoto’s research has resulted in a Phase I clinical trial that will study toxicity, response in AML cells, and drug levels. She is also studying mechanisms of resistance of AML cells to niclosamide to look for drugs that will act synergistically for future clinical trials. Her goal is to take discoveries in the laboratory and translate them to the clinics to improve the overall survival and quality of life in children with AML.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Niclosamide for the treatment of relapsed pediatric acute myeloid leukemia

Niclosamide for the Treatment of Relapsed/Refractory Pediatric Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Boston Children's Hospital

George Q. Daley, MD, PhD is Dean, Caroline Shields Walker Professor of Medicine, and Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. His research has focused on stem cell and cancer biology, with an emphasis on hematopoietic development and diseases of the bone marrow, blood and immune system. Daley earned his AB and MD degrees from Harvard and a PhD in biology from MIT. He has been a trainee, fellow and staff physician at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children’s Hospital. Prior to becoming Dean at HMS, he was an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Director of the Pediatric Stem Cell Transplantation Program of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children’s Hospital. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Association of Arts and Sciences.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Pluripotent Stem Cell-derived CAR-T and CAR-NK Cells for Immunotherapy of Leukemia and Lymphoma

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

Weill Cornell Medicine

I completed my Ph.D. in pharmacology at Zhejiang University, China, in June 2020, specializing in cancer immunology. My doctoral research provided in-depth training in mouse models, particularly the construction of humanized immune recombinants such as PBMC and CD34-engrafted xenografts for pharmacodynamic studies. I developed skills in in vitro drug screening, immune cell sorting, and animal models, solidifying my expertise in experimental design. Currently, I am conducting research in Dr. Wendy Béguelin's lab, focusing on the role of the tumor microenvironment in B lymphoma progression. I pioneered a multiphoton microscopy approach for real-time imaging of cellular interactions within lymphoid tissues, enabling a detailed view of cellular interactions in lymphoma. Supported by experts from the Béguelin, Chris Xu and Melnick groups, our team leverages advanced murine lymphoma models and deep-tissue imaging techniques.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Columbia University Medical Center

Dr. Teresa Palomero is a molecular and cellular biologist. She is a Professor at Columbia University in the Institute for Cancer Genetics. Her laboratory focuses on the identification of molecular alterations responsible for the development of Peripheral T-cell lymphomas, a heterogeneous group of very aggressive lymphoid malignances. Dr. Palomero has been a pioneer in the genomic analysis of Peripheral T-cell lymphoma cases and in the development of mouse models for better understanding the evolution of the disease and test novel therapeutic agents. Her extensive work on hematologic malignancies has led to the identification of key genomic alterations in leukemia and lymphoma including some currently used for molecular diagnosis.

Dr. Palomero scientific work has been published in top tier scientific journals including Nature Genetics, Nature Medicine and Cancer Cell, among others.

Program Name(s)

Discovery

Project Title

Targeting Microenvironment Determinants in Peripheral T-cell Lymphoma

University of California, San Diego

Dr. Leslie Crews is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at UCSD with a passion for stem cell biology and translational cancer research. She received her bachelor’s degree from UCLA and a PhD in Molecular Pathology from UCSD. During her postdoctoral training in leukemia and myeloma research, Dr. Crews and her collaborators discovered that the interferon-responsive RNA editing gene ADAR1 is hyper-activated in myeloma and that this molecule promotes disease progression and drug resistance by activating stem cell regulatory pathways. Since starting her independent laboratory in 2017 as a member of the Division of Regenerative Medicine and the Moores Cancer Center, the primary focus of the Crews Laboratory has been on multiple myeloma translational research. Her ongoing work aims to delve deeper into the molecular mechanisms of myeloma initiation and progression, with the goal of identifying novel, more selective therapies to treat individuals with this incurable cancer.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

Inflammation-responsive mechanisms of malignant stem cell generation and eradication in multiple myeloma

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

Josep Carreras Leukemia Research Institute

Dr. Melnick is a recognized leader in the fields of hematologic malignancies and cancer epigenetics. Among his major contributions are the first large-scale epigenomic studies in humans, which demonstrated that aberrant epigenetic programming is a hallmark of cancer and that epigenetic diversity is a key determinant of tumor fitness and poor clinical outcomes. These findings led to important mechanistic insights—for example, how mutations in IDH1 and IDH2 disrupt the epigenome through the production of an aberrant oncometabolite, and how mutations in TET2, WT1, IDH1/2, and FLT3 promote leukemogenesis through cooperative epigenetic reprogramming. This was the basis for him receiving the ASH Beutler Award for Outstanding Translational Research in 2020.  Dr. Melnick has played a foundational role in establishing the importance of epigenetic dysfunction in lymphomagenesis, elucidating the mechanistic roles of chromatin modifiers such as EZH2, CREBBP, EP300, KDM1A, KMT2D, HIST1H1, BTG1, ARID1A, TBL1XR1, and TET2. He has also pioneered studies on nuclear topology and its role in regulating the humoral immune response and the malignant transformation of B cells. In the therapeutic arena, Dr. Melnick has developed novel targeted therapies against key lymphoma oncoproteins such as BCL6, SIRT3, and MALT1, and has helped define the rationale for additional targets, including EZH2. Several of these therapeutic approaches have received FDA approval or progressed to phase III clinical trials. He has authored more than 350 scientific publications, held numerous national leadership roles, organized prominent scientific conferences, and devoted extensive effort to mentoring trainees and junior faculty—many of whom now lead distinguished careers in basic and translational research. Dr. Melnick serves on the Board of Directors of both the Blood Cancer United and the Lymphoma Research Foundation. He also has extensive experience initiating and leading multi-center and international research consortia, and is currently the Principal Investigator of several program grants, including two active Blood Cancer United SCOR and RAFL programmatic grants.  He recently took on the position of the Josep Carreras Institute in Barcelona, a unique, free-standing institute focused exclusively on Blood Cancer research, leveraging a diverse and highly accomplished team of cutting-edge basic, translational and clinical scientists. With expertise in many disciplines including epigenetics, immunology, stem cell biology, metabolism, genetics, cell biology and many others, the team integrates artificial intelligence and state-of-the-art preclinical facilities to lead the world in curing Blood Cancers.  The institute is located in Barcelona, which has become one of the top hotspots for biomedicine and biotech in Europe.

Program Name(s)

Research Accelerator for Follicular Lymphoma

Project Title

The ERADICATE follicular lymphoma consortium: accelerating improved outcomes for FL patients

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

I graduated from Columbia College of Physicians & Surgeons, where I stayed for Internal Medicine residency training/chief residency before moving to Boston for fellowship training in hematology/oncology at Dana-Farber/Mass General Cancer Center. I stayed on as faculty in the lymphoma program at Dana-Farber and am now an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.  My research interests are in the clinical and translational study of immunotherapies for lymphoma, with a particular interest in cellular immunotherapies. I also serve as the Medical Director of the Immune Effector Cell Therapy program at Dana-Farber, which houses our commercial and research cell therapy programs across the Institute.  I am the principal investigator of industry-sponsored and investigator-initiated clinical trials involving cellular therapies for lymphoma, and lead retrospective and translational studies to identify mechanisms of response and resistance to these therapies.

Program Name(s)

Career Development Program

Project Title

CAR T-cell therapy in central nervous system (CNS) lymphoma: a study in safety and efficacy and a model in which to study mechanisms of neurotoxicity

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

MD- Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Residencies and Fellowships in Clinical and radiation Oncology in Israel and Memorial Sloan-Kettering. Armored Brigade Physician (Major), IDF, project leader R&D branch, IDF.

Attending and Member, MSKCC. Co-Leader Lymphoma DMT, Chief- Radiation Hematology Service. Hodgkin and Non-Hodgkin NCCN guidelines committees.

Chairman of the International Lymphoma Radiation Oncology Group (www.ilrog.org)—over 1300 members in 75 countries.

Clinical Research focus on role of RT in salvage of lymphomas, breast cancer after chest RT, combined modality in PCNSL, RT for gastric MZL. Currently- clinical and biological aspects of sub-lethal radiation for lymphomas; role of RT to improve CAR-T cell therapy.

Translational research interest: Past- ATM mutations and risk of second cancers; autophagy as a mechanism for tumor cell death after radiation. Present- mechanisms and predictors of lethal effects of very low-dose RT on lymphoma cells and their environment.

Program Name(s)

Translational Research Program

Project Title

Impact of sublethal radiation dose on tumor response, microenvironment and the immune system