ASH News Daily 2017 - Issue 3 - B-30

ASH News Daily

Page B-30

Monday, December 11, 2017

career-

enhancemenT
awardS

ASH Scholars
«« From Page B-25

differ from adult leukemias. His lab
has shown that as blood progenitors pass through fetal, neonatal,
and adult stages of life, their response to mutations changes. Thus,
normal developmental pathways
can contribute to leukemia initiation. His lab is also developing
tools to understand how inherited
genetic variants further alter developmental pathways and promote
leukemogenesis. The ASH Scholar
Award will support work on one
gene that often harbors rare inherited variants in infant leukemia,
MLL3. Tools developed through
this project will be useful for modeling interactions between inherited variants, somatic mutations and
normal developmental programs.
The award alss will open new lines
of investigation into the causes
and potential treatments of childhood leukemia, and Dr. Magee is
grateful for this opportunity.

Christopher Ott, PhD
Dr. Ott is a principal investigator
in the Center for Cancer Research at
MGH and Harvard Medical School.
He received his undergraduate
degree in biochemistry from the
University of Wisconsin in Madison and his doctorate in molecular
genetics from Northwestern University. Before joining the faculty at
MGH, Dr. Ott was a postdoctoral
fellow in the laboratory of Dr. James
Bradner at the Dana-Farber Cancer
Institute, where
the principle focus of his research
was deciphering
the
mechanism
of action of small
molecule chemical probes directly
targeting mechanisms of gene expression control.
Currently, Dr. Ott and his laboratory are investigating how human
gene expression control factors
function and malfunction in lymphoid malignancies, and how they
may be modulated with drugs.
Gene control factors bind to regions
of transcriptionally active chromatin called enhancers. Enhancers are
critical for driving cell-type specific

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gene expression, and are characterized by specific open chromatin
structures. Enabled by the generous
ASH Scholar Award, Dr. Ott's aim
is to identify enhancer elements in
malignant lymphoid cells, and utilize novel genome and epigenome
editing technologies, along with
small molecule chemical probes,
to identify enhancer and enhancerassociated factors essential for malignant cell survival.
Elli Papaemmanuil, PhD
Dr. Papaemmanuil, PhD is a
team leader at the Computational
Oncology Service, Department of
Epidemiology and Biostatistics at
MSKCC and is also serving as associate director for the Center of
Hematological Malignancies. Dr.
Papaemmanuil earned her bachelor
and master's degrees in human molecular genetics from the University
of Glasgow in the United Kingdom
and a PhD in population genetics
at the Institute of
Cancer Research
at the University
of London. Her
research involved
the characterization of germline
predisposition
loci in childhood
acute
lymphoblastic
leukemia
(ALL) by means of population genomewide association studies. Dr.
Papaemmanuil pursued postdoctoral research at the Wellcome Trust
Sanger Institute under the mentorship of Peter Campbell where she
led research into the discovery of
cancer gene drivers of hematological neoplasms. More recently, Dr.
Papaemmanuil has developed experimental and analytical methods
to support molecular characterization of large patient cohorts and
study the genetic and clinical interrelationships of leukemias. She currently leads large population genomic profiling studies in myeloid
neoplasms and in ALL with the aim
of characterizing how the molecular architecture of the disease and
the corresponding clonal relationships determine clinical phenotype
and response to therapy.
Vikram Paralkar, MD
Vikram R. Paralkar, MD, has a
research interest in transcriptional
regulation in normal and malignant
hematopoiesis. He received his
medical degree at Seth G.S. Medical College in Mumbai, India, did
his residency and chief residency
at Temple University Hospital in
Philadelphia, and his hematology/
oncology fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is an
assistant professor in the Department of Medicine. His postdoctoral

research was in the laboratory of
Dr. Mitchell Weiss at the Children's
Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Paralkar is interested in understanding how transcription factors, chromatin modifiers, and noncoding
RNAs regulate gene expression in
hematopoiesis. By understanding
their interplay during normal hematopoiesis, Dr. Paralkar hopes to
understand how their dysregulation may contribute to disorders
such as bone marrow failure or leukemia. His clinical interests are
in the treatment
of
myeloproliferative disorders,
myelodysplastic
syndromes, and
AML, and the
current focus of his research is on
understanding how mutations in
chromatin modifiers in the myeloid
lineage leads to disordered hematopoiesis. In addition to the ASH
Scholar Award, Dr. Paralkar's work
also has been funded by the ASH
Research Training Award for Fellows and the NIDDK K08 award.

CLINICAL JUNIOR
RESEARCH FACULTY
Premal Lulla, MD
Dr. Lulla is a hematopoietic
stem cell transplant physician
at the Center for Cell and Gene
Therapy (CAGT) within the Baylor
College of Medicine. He trained at
DY Patil Medical College in India
before moving to Baylor for postdoctoral training and to pursue his
interests in translational research.
Specifically, his research focuses
on the preclinical development
and clinical use of
ex vivo expanded
adoptively transferred T cells to
treat a spectrum
of cancers including lymphomas,
leukemias,
and
nasopharyngeal
carcinoma.
Indeed, within the translational laboratories at CAGT, he is focused on
identifying suitable tumor targets
and expansion strategies for tumorspecific T cells. Additionally, in his
role as a clinician, Dr. Lulla is leading the clinical translation of these
novel therapies such as this project
to treat patients with multiple myeloma using T cells specific for multiple-tumor associated antigens. He
is grateful to ASH for the support
for his clinical trial and for a critical step in the development of his
translational research career.

»» ASH SCHOLARS Page B-39

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of ASH News Daily 2017 - Issue 3