hematology/oncology

Yi Zeng, PhD, and Emmanuel Katsanis, MD, are researching cancer vaccines. Funding from Tee Up For Tots enabled Dr. Zeng to conduct research and publish results that resulted in securing over $2 million in additional funding.

Click here to learn more about Katsanis' laboratory.

Our research team is concentrating its efforts on developing better therapies for children with cancer. These include preclinical studies of novel drugs and vaccines, clinical trials with new agents and innovative approaches in stem cell transplantation.

A novel anti-cancer vaccine has been developed in Dr. Emmanuel Katsanis’ laboratory (called Chaperone Rich Cell Lysate or CRCL) that has been shown to be effective against a variety of tumors in mice. Dr. Katsanis and the scientists in his laboratory are investigating how this vaccine works by analyzing its actions on important immune cells such as T cells, natural killer cells and dendritic cells. The scientific goals of Dr. Katsanis’ tumor immunology program are to understand how CRCL vaccine, which is made up of substances derived from a patient’s cancer cells, stimulates the patient’s immune system to fight its own cancer and prevent it from coming back. This research is critical for the development of effective new immune therapies that can be used in combination with chemotherapy against different cancers.

Dr. Samita Andreansky’s research is focused on understanding how CRCL vaccine can elicit antibodies to tumor specific proteins. Antibodies bind the tumor proteins and trigger responses against them by directing specialized immune cells such as macrophages to punch holes resulting in cancer cell death. The antibody producing cells are called B cells, remain in the body for years and are able to respond to recurring cancer. The role of antibody in tumor destruction is under investigation in a variety of cancers such as neuroblastoma, lymphoma and leukemia.

Dr. Rochelle Bagatell’s research focuses on the study of drugs that block the function of chaperone proteins, molecules that assist in the folding and trafficking of vital proteins within cells. Chaperone protein inhibitor drugs therefore can kill cancer cells. Dr. Bagatell is involved with multi institutional clinical trials in which children with recurrent, refractory solid tumors are being treated with these novel drugs. Integral to these trials is the laboratory-based assessment of how these drugs affect patient cancer cells. The overall objective is to understand how these drugs work and assist in the development of newer drugs that can eventually be used clinically in children and adolescents with cancer.

Dr. Brenda Wittman is studying whether body mass index is a predictor of disease-free survival in pediatric cancer patients. Pediatric patients who are overweight or underweight have different body compositions and are likely to metabolize chemotherapy drugs differently than those children who are of normal weight. This research will provide insight into how drug dosing should be modified to decrease the side effects in these patients and to improve their outcome.

Dr. Michael Graham and Dr. Martin Andreansky are studying innovating approaches with umbilical cord blood transplantation for hematologic malignancies. They are also investigating the use of several cycles of very high dose chemotherapy, with drugs less likely to result in resistant cancers, given over a short period of time and followed by stem cell rescue.