New Investigator Research Grant Program

Relapsed leukemia is a leading cause of childhood cancer deaths. Although more children are being treated with newer immunotherapy agents like blinatumomab and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, an often-fatal form of relapsed leukemia after immunotherapy has emerged, called lineage switch (LS). Lineage switch is when the patient’s original acute lymphoid leukemia (ALL) switches into acute myeloid leukemia (AML), and is then extremely resistant to all available therapies. Indeed, less than 12% of patients who relapse with LS-AML survive. This means that most patients are unfortunately incurable if they experience lineage switch post immunotherapy. Dr. Yang Ding in the Department of Oncology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine is studying this devastating form of leukemia relapse. Dr. Ding will create microscopic models of the bone marrow to model leukemia responses to immunotherapy. Dr. Ding will use this information to develop and test new drug combinations to improve cure rates for patients in future clinical trials.