TKF Pledges Financial Support to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to Help Fund the Research of Dr. Jae Park
2024 TKF Grant Recipient
Dr. Jae Park
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
We are pleased to announce a new partnership with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and our support of a first-of-its-kind CAR-T cell therapy clinical trial, led by Dr. Jae Park. Our philanthropic support will help this early Phase I trial reach more patients in need--with the ultimate goal of demonstrating favorable results along the path to FDA approval.
Dr. Jae Park
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
We are pleased to announce a new partnership with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and our support of a first-of-its-kind CAR-T cell therapy clinical trial, led by Dr. Jae Park. Our philanthropic support will help this early Phase I trial reach more patients in need--with the ultimate goal of demonstrating favorable results along the path to FDA approval.
TKF Pledges Financial Support to the Leukemia Research Foundation to Help Fund the Research of Dr. Karantanos
2023 TKF Grant Recipient
Dr. Theodoros Karantanos
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Dr. Karantanos' research is related to the dissection of the molecular biology of CCRL2/STAT1 pathway in secondary acute myeloid leukemia.
Dr. Theodoros Karantanos
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Dr. Karantanos' research is related to the dissection of the molecular biology of CCRL2/STAT1 pathway in secondary acute myeloid leukemia.
TKF Pledges Financial Support to the Leukemia Research Foundation to Help Fund the Research of Xufeng Chen, PhD
2022 TKF Grant Recipient
Xufeng Chen, PhD
New York University School of Medicine
Targeting Antigen Presentation for Next-Generation Immunotherapy of Acute Myeloid Leukemia
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a devastating blood cancer. Although the revolutionary discovery of immunotherapies, designed to boost the immune system to eliminate cancer cells, has saved thousands of lives, this brilliant method doesn’t seem to work well in the treatment of AML patients. One potential reason is that “smart” AML cells can pretend to be normal cells to avoid being recognized by the immune system through masking their tumor antigens (the “ID” of AML cells). Thus, it is necessary to understand how AML can reduce the presentation of tumor antigens and to identify those AML-derived antigen presentation regulators in order to offer novel immunotherapy options for AML patients. Using systematic screening approaches, we have identified IRF2BP2 as one of these
regulators. IRF2BP2 potently suppresses antigen presentation in AML. Notably, ablation of IRF2BP2 can facilitate immune cell-mediated elimination of AML. In this proposal, we seek to comprehensively investigate how this protein regulates tumor antigen presentation in AML. Moreover, this study aims to test the feasibility of combining IRF2BP2 inhibition and existing frontline immunotherapies from a therapeutic perspective. Our proposed studies will not only advance our knowledge of AML-associated regulation of antigen presentation but also provide new candidates for next-generation cancer immunotherapy, that may offer a better therapeutic option to patients with poor responses to current therapies.
Xufeng Chen, PhD
New York University School of Medicine
Targeting Antigen Presentation for Next-Generation Immunotherapy of Acute Myeloid Leukemia
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a devastating blood cancer. Although the revolutionary discovery of immunotherapies, designed to boost the immune system to eliminate cancer cells, has saved thousands of lives, this brilliant method doesn’t seem to work well in the treatment of AML patients. One potential reason is that “smart” AML cells can pretend to be normal cells to avoid being recognized by the immune system through masking their tumor antigens (the “ID” of AML cells). Thus, it is necessary to understand how AML can reduce the presentation of tumor antigens and to identify those AML-derived antigen presentation regulators in order to offer novel immunotherapy options for AML patients. Using systematic screening approaches, we have identified IRF2BP2 as one of these
regulators. IRF2BP2 potently suppresses antigen presentation in AML. Notably, ablation of IRF2BP2 can facilitate immune cell-mediated elimination of AML. In this proposal, we seek to comprehensively investigate how this protein regulates tumor antigen presentation in AML. Moreover, this study aims to test the feasibility of combining IRF2BP2 inhibition and existing frontline immunotherapies from a therapeutic perspective. Our proposed studies will not only advance our knowledge of AML-associated regulation of antigen presentation but also provide new candidates for next-generation cancer immunotherapy, that may offer a better therapeutic option to patients with poor responses to current therapies.
TKF Pledges Financial Support to the Leukemia Research Foundation to Help Fund Dr. Matt Christopher's Research
2021 Grant Recipient
Matt Christopher, MD, PhD
Washington University in St Louis
Matt Christopher, MD, PhD
Washington University in St Louis
An Update to TKF from Kevin Radelet, Executive Director of the Leukemia Research Foundation
After too many years of little research in fighting AML there has been solid progress just in the last four years with at least a half dozen new drugs introduced and a significant amount of new research projects underway. Thanks in part to funding from TKF, the Leukemia Research Foundation has dedicated nearly 30% of its research funding in the past five years toward AML-focused research projects. That reflects a promising trend that is evident in the blood cancer arena.
Like everyone, Dr. Blanco and researchers around the world have been affected by COVID with the closing of labs for a period of time. All LRF funded researchers were provided a no cost extension to complete their projects once the labs reopened. Please note that Dr. Blanco will be interviewed LIVE on the LRF’s Facebook page on Friday, September 11 at 7:00 pm eastern to provide an update on his work. Also, here is a link to 2020-2021 researchers being funded https://allbloodcancers.org/recipients/
We appreciate that you are planning on producing your annual event this year that will assist us in the momentum built in recent years to fund AML research. Please keep us apprised of your plans. Thank you again for all you and the TKF does in pursuit of a cure!
Like everyone, Dr. Blanco and researchers around the world have been affected by COVID with the closing of labs for a period of time. All LRF funded researchers were provided a no cost extension to complete their projects once the labs reopened. Please note that Dr. Blanco will be interviewed LIVE on the LRF’s Facebook page on Friday, September 11 at 7:00 pm eastern to provide an update on his work. Also, here is a link to 2020-2021 researchers being funded https://allbloodcancers.org/recipients/
We appreciate that you are planning on producing your annual event this year that will assist us in the momentum built in recent years to fund AML research. Please keep us apprised of your plans. Thank you again for all you and the TKF does in pursuit of a cure!
TKF Pledges Financial Support to the Leukemia Research Foundation to Help Fund Dr. Bridget Marcellino's Research
2020 Grant Recipient
Bridget Marcellino, MD, PhD
Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai – New York, New York
Enhancing natural killer cell recognition of leukemic cells
The prognosis for patients with relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is very poor and it is therefore essential to develop new therapeutic options for this malignancy. It is clear that the immune system plays a crucial role in combating leukemic cells, however, to date no immunotherapeutics have proven successful in the clinic. Natural killer cells are one population of immune cells which have been shown to be important for targeting leukemic cells. Leukemic cells have a mechanism, however, to evade natural killer cells. We are proposing to test a potential therapeutic, the 7C6 antibody, that has the potential to allow for the leukemic cells to be better recognized by natural killer cells. We will test this antibody alone and in combination with drugs that increase the expression of proteins on the surface of leukemia cells which are recognized by NK cells. The studies will be performed on leukemic cells from patients with AML and on mice who have been injected with human leukemic cells. Ultimately, results from this work could serve as preclinical rationale for a clinical trial of this novel therapeutic in AML patients.
Bridget Marcellino, MD, PhD
Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai – New York, New York
Enhancing natural killer cell recognition of leukemic cells
The prognosis for patients with relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is very poor and it is therefore essential to develop new therapeutic options for this malignancy. It is clear that the immune system plays a crucial role in combating leukemic cells, however, to date no immunotherapeutics have proven successful in the clinic. Natural killer cells are one population of immune cells which have been shown to be important for targeting leukemic cells. Leukemic cells have a mechanism, however, to evade natural killer cells. We are proposing to test a potential therapeutic, the 7C6 antibody, that has the potential to allow for the leukemic cells to be better recognized by natural killer cells. We will test this antibody alone and in combination with drugs that increase the expression of proteins on the surface of leukemia cells which are recognized by NK cells. The studies will be performed on leukemic cells from patients with AML and on mice who have been injected with human leukemic cells. Ultimately, results from this work could serve as preclinical rationale for a clinical trial of this novel therapeutic in AML patients.
TKF Pledges Financial Support to the Leukemia Research Foundation to Help Fund Dr. Mario A. Blanco's Research
May 8, 2020
$100,000.00 – Dual targeting of LSD1 and KAT6A to induce therapeutic differentiation in AML
20,000 people are diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) annually, and the majority will die from the disease. Chemotherapy is often poorly tolerated by the older patients commonly afflicted by AML, and few therapeutic advances have been made in decades. New treatments are desperately needed. An alternative type of AML therapy, called “differentiation therapy” aims to treat patients by changing their rapidly dividing cancer cells into cells that do not divide. Differentiation therapy is the standard treatment for one subtype of AML, and it cures 95% of these patients. However, differentiation therapy has not been developed for other subtypes of AML. Our recent work has identified a combination of drugs that are highly effective in our preliminary experimental models of differentiation therapy. The goal of this project is to test this drug combination in more advanced models of AML to see if they could potentially be entered in clinical trials.
$100,000.00 – Dual targeting of LSD1 and KAT6A to induce therapeutic differentiation in AML
20,000 people are diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) annually, and the majority will die from the disease. Chemotherapy is often poorly tolerated by the older patients commonly afflicted by AML, and few therapeutic advances have been made in decades. New treatments are desperately needed. An alternative type of AML therapy, called “differentiation therapy” aims to treat patients by changing their rapidly dividing cancer cells into cells that do not divide. Differentiation therapy is the standard treatment for one subtype of AML, and it cures 95% of these patients. However, differentiation therapy has not been developed for other subtypes of AML. Our recent work has identified a combination of drugs that are highly effective in our preliminary experimental models of differentiation therapy. The goal of this project is to test this drug combination in more advanced models of AML to see if they could potentially be entered in clinical trials.
TKF Pledges Financial Support to the Leukemia Research Foundation to Help Fund Dr. Egusa's Research
Thanks to continued support from the Teddy Kim Foundation, the Leukemia Research Foundation (www.allbloodcancers.org) is proud to fund another New Investigator focused on the causes and cures for acute myeloid leukemia (AML).
Shunji Egusa, PhD currently serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Optical Science the University of North Carolina – Charlotte. Previously he earned his bachelor of science in physics at The University of Tokyo and his Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Chicago.
Dr. Egusa’s funded project is titled Au nano-linker: Turning standard AML drugs into lineage-targeted therapeutics
“Two basic and related problems that face cancer patients are that treatments can be very difficult, even brutal, yet the pay-offs in terms of benefits can be uncertain. This is because toxic treatments destroy many normal cells while often permitting the most aggressive cancer cells to survive.
A straightforward solution is to selectively deliver cancer drugs to cancer cells and not normal cells. Unfortunately, existing technologies to do this, for example, direct joining of drugs to antibodies, have significant limitations and the impact of the existing technologies on patient health has not been as great as hoped.
Here, we use a new, versatile nanotechnology approach as a way to link a myriad of cancer drugs to leukemia-targeting molecules, to readily and simply address the problem of selectively delivering cancer drugs to cancerous cells.
This nanotechnology, Au nano-linker, uses extremely small (“nano”-scale) gold (Au) as intermediaries with unique chemical properties to which drugs and leukemia-targeting molecules are simultaneously linked by simple but different chemistries.
In essence, this approach can turn off-the-shelf drugs into advanced disease-targeted drugs, allowing the drugs to be selectively released in leukemic cells while sparing normal cells/tissues to reduce overall toxicity/side-effects, and to improve effectiveness of treatment.”
Shunji Egusa, PhD currently serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Optical Science the University of North Carolina – Charlotte. Previously he earned his bachelor of science in physics at The University of Tokyo and his Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Chicago.
Dr. Egusa’s funded project is titled Au nano-linker: Turning standard AML drugs into lineage-targeted therapeutics
“Two basic and related problems that face cancer patients are that treatments can be very difficult, even brutal, yet the pay-offs in terms of benefits can be uncertain. This is because toxic treatments destroy many normal cells while often permitting the most aggressive cancer cells to survive.
A straightforward solution is to selectively deliver cancer drugs to cancer cells and not normal cells. Unfortunately, existing technologies to do this, for example, direct joining of drugs to antibodies, have significant limitations and the impact of the existing technologies on patient health has not been as great as hoped.
Here, we use a new, versatile nanotechnology approach as a way to link a myriad of cancer drugs to leukemia-targeting molecules, to readily and simply address the problem of selectively delivering cancer drugs to cancerous cells.
This nanotechnology, Au nano-linker, uses extremely small (“nano”-scale) gold (Au) as intermediaries with unique chemical properties to which drugs and leukemia-targeting molecules are simultaneously linked by simple but different chemistries.
In essence, this approach can turn off-the-shelf drugs into advanced disease-targeted drugs, allowing the drugs to be selectively released in leukemic cells while sparing normal cells/tissues to reduce overall toxicity/side-effects, and to improve effectiveness of treatment.”
TKF Pledges Financial Support to the Leukemia Research Foundation for the Second Straight Year
For the second straight year, The Teddy Kim Foundation (TKF) is proud to announce that it has pledged continued financial support to the Leukemia Research Foundation (LRF) to further its New Investigator Research Program. As such, funds contributed by TKF in 2017 will provide partial funding of a one year grant to Dr. Jing Li, Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, Shanghai Normal University.
Dr. Li’s project funded by the LRF, is titled The role of Sirt2 in the pathogenesis of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Drug-resistance and disease relapse are the major problems for current leukemia treatment. Signaling emerged from bone marrow microenvironment (niche) protects leukemic cells from chemotherapy drugs, which is one of the critical mechanisms of drug resistance.
Sirt2 is an intracellular enzyme, which regulates cell proliferation, survival and migration by sensing the niche signaling. Sirt2 plays such role by removing acetyl group from its protein substrates such as NF-κB and Stat3. We found that Sirt2 inactivation promotes leukemia development and drug-resistance, suggesting Sirt2 is a leukemic repressor. Although Sirt2 is highly expressed in leukemic cells, it activity is repressed by bone marrow niche signaling.
Dr. Li predicts that activation of Sirt2 by inhibiting such niche signaling might repress AML progression and enhance the treatment effects of chemotherapy. Dr. Li wants to test her hypothesis by using a unique Sirt2 deficient leukemic animal model. The expected results of this study will not only help uncover the role of Sirt2 in leukemia pathogenesis but also allow the development of medications for leukemia treatment.
Dr. Li is a well-trained, innovative and competitive scientist pursuing an independent career in research of both normal and leukemia hematopoiesis. She earned her M.D. at Lanzhou Medical College and PhD from Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 2015-16 she completed her post-doctoral fellowship at Loyola University Cancer Center in Chicago.
Dr. Li's work, and the New Investigator Research Program of the Leukemia Research Foundation, strives to have a broader impact on leukemia therapy which also directly correlates with the goals of the Teddy Kim Foundation. Like Teddy himself, we want to benefit and touch the lives of others while moving forward toward our goal of conquering all blood cancers.
Dr. Li’s project funded by the LRF, is titled The role of Sirt2 in the pathogenesis of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Drug-resistance and disease relapse are the major problems for current leukemia treatment. Signaling emerged from bone marrow microenvironment (niche) protects leukemic cells from chemotherapy drugs, which is one of the critical mechanisms of drug resistance.
Sirt2 is an intracellular enzyme, which regulates cell proliferation, survival and migration by sensing the niche signaling. Sirt2 plays such role by removing acetyl group from its protein substrates such as NF-κB and Stat3. We found that Sirt2 inactivation promotes leukemia development and drug-resistance, suggesting Sirt2 is a leukemic repressor. Although Sirt2 is highly expressed in leukemic cells, it activity is repressed by bone marrow niche signaling.
Dr. Li predicts that activation of Sirt2 by inhibiting such niche signaling might repress AML progression and enhance the treatment effects of chemotherapy. Dr. Li wants to test her hypothesis by using a unique Sirt2 deficient leukemic animal model. The expected results of this study will not only help uncover the role of Sirt2 in leukemia pathogenesis but also allow the development of medications for leukemia treatment.
Dr. Li is a well-trained, innovative and competitive scientist pursuing an independent career in research of both normal and leukemia hematopoiesis. She earned her M.D. at Lanzhou Medical College and PhD from Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 2015-16 she completed her post-doctoral fellowship at Loyola University Cancer Center in Chicago.
Dr. Li's work, and the New Investigator Research Program of the Leukemia Research Foundation, strives to have a broader impact on leukemia therapy which also directly correlates with the goals of the Teddy Kim Foundation. Like Teddy himself, we want to benefit and touch the lives of others while moving forward toward our goal of conquering all blood cancers.
TKF Pledges Financial Support to the Leukemia Research Foundation
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The Teddy Kim Foundation (TKF) is proud to announce that it has pledged financial support to the Leukemia Research Foundation (LRF) to further its New Investigator Research Program. As such, funds contributed by TKF in 2016 will provide partial funding of a one year grant to Dr. Xinyang Zhao, PhD at the University of Alabama.
Dr. Zhao has published 16 co-authored papers in top cancer journals (including Cancer Cell) in the past four years. His current project funded by the LRF, is titled Targeting PRMT1 in Acute Megakaryocytic Leukemia (AMKL). AMKL is a fatal disease that is often not responsive to chemotherapy. A specific protein, PRMT1, is expressed in AMKL and that protein stimulates leukemia cells to modify and develop further. Higher expression of PRMT1 is correlated with shorter survival time in acute myeloid leukemia patients. Dr. Zhao's long-term goal is to understand how PRMT1 can be manipulated in hematological malignancies for curative therapies. Therefore, Dr. Zhao's project findings will have broader impact on leukemia therapy, which may lead to using PRMT1 inhibitors for clinical trials. Dr. Zhao's work, and the New Investigator Research Program of the Leukemia Research Foundation, strives to have a broader impact on leukemia therapy which also directly correlates with the goals of the Teddy Kim Foundation. Like Teddy himself, we want to benefit and touch the lives of others while moving forward toward our goal of conquering all blood cancers. |
