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Young Investigator Grants

Young Investigator grants are designed to fill the critical need for startup funds for less experienced researchers to pursue promising research ideas. Eligible applicants may apply during their fellowship training or early in their research careers but must not have achieved an appointment higher than Instructor. These grants encourage and cultivate the best and brightest researchers of the future and lead to long-term research projects. The Young Investigator grant offers up to $60,000 per year for three years.

Elucidating and Targeting the Cell Surface Proteome of Pediatric T Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia is the most common childhood cancer. T cell ALL is an especially aggressive subtype of ALL which affects up to 20% of children with ALL. Up to 25% of children with T-ALL will relapse and succumb to chemotherapy resistant disease. Leukemia survivors experience long-term side effects that permanently affect their quality of life, both physically and mentally. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop targeted therapies to not only improve survival but reduce long-term side affects associated with current treatments.

Principal Investigator Name: 

Mark Gower, PhD

Project Title: 

Elucidating and Targeting the Cell Surface Proteome of Pediatric T Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

Year Awarded: 

2025

Cancer Research Category: 

Category of Grant: 

Medical, Nurse Researcher, Quality of LIfe: 

Institution: 

The role of senescence in diffuse midline glioma tumorigenesis and treatment resistance

Pediatric diffuse midline gliomas (DMGs) are highly aggressive brain tumors with a universally fatal prognosis, often taking the lives of children within a year of diagnosis. Despite extensive efforts, radiation therapy remains the only treatment that can extend survival, but tumor progression is inevitable. Recent advances in adult cancer research have revealed that a biological process called cellular senescence plays a significant role in how cancers develop, resist treatment, and recur.

Principal Investigator Name: 

Timothy Chang, MD/PhD

Project Title: 

The role of senescence in diffuse midline glioma tumorigenesis and treatment resistance

Year Awarded: 

2025

Cancer Research Category: 

Category of Grant: 

Medical, Nurse Researcher, Quality of LIfe: 

Institution: 

Next-Generation CAR-T Cell Immunotherapies for Pediatric Acute Myeloid Leukemia

In recent years, researchers have found ways to artificially reprogram our own immune system so that it recognizes specific markers and fights tumor cells. Unfortunately, certain pediatric cancers, such as acute myeloid leukemia (a type of blood cancer), are difficult to treat because the cells that make up the tumor either have the same targets as healthy cells, causing undesired effects on normal organs, or are resistant to elimination by the immune system.

Principal Investigator Name: 

Gabriele Casirat, PhD

Project Title: 

Next-Generation CAR-T Cell Immunotherapies for Pediatric Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Year Awarded: 

2025

Cancer Research Category: 

Category of Grant: 

Medical, Nurse Researcher, Quality of LIfe: 

Institution: 

Utilizing chromatin directed inhibitors to regulate gene expression in Ewing sarcoma for therapeutic benefit

Ewing sarcoma is the second most common bone cancer in children, and the treatment of Ewing sarcoma continues to rely on traditional chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation. Unfortunately, children who have Ewing sarcoma that returns after initial therapy or whose disease has spread to other places in their body, a process known as metastasis, often do not survive their disease. Immunotherapies are new approaches to treating cancer using the patient’s own immune system.

Principal Investigator Name: 

Justin Sperlazza, MD/PhD

Project Title: 

Utilizing chromatin directed inhibitors to regulate gene expression in Ewing sarcoma for therapeutic benefit

Year Awarded: 

2024

Cancer Research Category: 

Category of Grant: 

Medical, Nurse Researcher, Quality of LIfe: 

Institution: 

MYCN-induced molecular clock disruption and metabolic rewiring drive neuroblastoma

Neuroblastoma (NB) is one of the leading causes of pediatric cancer mortality. Despite advances in therapy, the survival rate for relapsed NB patients is dismal. MYCN is a major genetic driver for NB disease progression and relapse. However, targeting MYCN directly remains challenging, and novel therapeutic approaches against MYCN warrant in-depth investigations. Our lab has shown that MYCN profoundly rewires the way NB utilizes nutrients--specifically lipids--to drive oncogenesis. This function is effectively opposed by a core component of the circadian clock called BMAL1.

Principal Investigator Name: 

Lingzhi Li, PhD

Project Title: 

MYCN-induced molecular clock disruption and metabolic rewiring drive neuroblastoma

Year Awarded: 

2024

Cancer Research Category: 

Category of Grant: 

Medical, Nurse Researcher, Quality of LIfe: 

Institution: 

Improving homing and activity of CAR T cells in pediatric sarcomas

Despite various treatment options, cure rates for sarcoma patients continue to be very poor. Many researchers have developed new therapies that harness the immune system to cure cancers; however, most of these treatments (called immunotherapies) are not effective in solid tumors. One of the most promising therapies involves T cells expressing artificial receptors that allow them to recognize and kill cancer cells.

Principal Investigator Name: 

Joselyn Cruz Cruz, PhD

Project Title: 

Improving homing and activity of CAR T cells in pediatric sarcomas

Year Awarded: 

2024

Cancer Research Category: 

Category of Grant: 

Medical, Nurse Researcher, Quality of LIfe: 

Institution: 

Vaccine-boosted CAR T cell therapy for high risk neuroblastoma

Neuroblastoma is one of the most common solid tumors in pediatrics. High-risk neuroblastoma has dismal outcomes, with only a ~50% cure rate. Patients whose cancer comes back after therapy are almost incurable. Therapies used to stimulate a patient's own immune system to fight cancer have positively changed the way we treat pediatric cancer. One therapy in particular, called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, engineer a patients own immune system (T cells) with a receptor (CAR) that allows them to find and attack cancer cells.

Principal Investigator Name: 

Timothy Spear, MD/PhD

Project Title: 

Vaccine-boosted CAR T cell therapy for high risk neuroblastoma

Year Awarded: 

2024

Cancer Research Category: 

Category of Grant: 

Medical, Nurse Researcher, Quality of LIfe: 

Institution: 

Capitalizing on functional genomics with targeted protein degradation in neuroblastoma

Children with solid tumors have poor overall survival. Further, the treatments used for these diseases are very toxic. One particularly difficult to treat pediatric solid tumor is called neuroblastoma (NB). Children with neuroblastoma are treated with very toxic therapies, and even so, many of them will not be cured. In addition, while large-scale studies have identified the specific proteins that NB cells depend on for growth, these proteins are especially hard to target with traditional drugs. This limits our ability to treat NB effectively.

Principal Investigator Name: 

Ian Delahunty, PhD

Project Title: 

Capitalizing on functional genomics with targeted protein degradation in neuroblastoma

Year Awarded: 

2024

Cancer Research Category: 

Category of Grant: 

Medical, Nurse Researcher, Quality of LIfe: 

Institution: 

Defining how unique properties of the pediatric immune system contribute to poor efficacy of checkpoint blockade in children

Novel therapies are desperately needed for pediatric solid tumors, where more than 30% of patients die from their disease. Immunotherapies offer a significant potential to meet this need. However, this potential has not yet been realized, largely due to differences in how the immune system reacts to pediatric cancers. Pediatric tumors have less mutations than adult tumors. To the immune system, few mutations means that pediatric tumors appear more similar to healthy tissue than do adult tumors.

Principal Investigator Name: 

Adrienne Long, MD/PhD

Project Title: 

Defining how unique properties of the pediatric immune system contribute to poor efficacy of checkpoint blockade in children

Year Awarded: 

2024

Cancer Research Category: 

Category of Grant: 

Medical, Nurse Researcher, Quality of LIfe: 

Institution: 

In vivo transdermal generation of CD33 CAR T-cells towards acute myeloid leukemia

Pediatric acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is the second most common pediatric leukemia, with treatments still based on intense, conventional chemotherapy and overall survival remaining below 70%. Recently, therapeutic research has explored the engineering of a patient’s own immune cells to target unique AML cell surface markers. However to manufacture these therapies immune cells must be collected from patients whose immune system has been depleted by multiple rounds of chemotherapy.

Principal Investigator Name: 

Ruby Sims, PhD

Project Title: 

In vivo transdermal generation of CD33 CAR T-cells towards acute myeloid leukemia

Year Awarded: 

2024

Cancer Research Category: 

Category of Grant: 

Medical, Nurse Researcher, Quality of LIfe: 

Institution: 

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