UF Health Cancer Center at Tandem Meetings
The UF Health Cancer Center presented at the Tandem Meetings I Transplantation & Cellular Therapy Meetings of ASTCT and CIBMTR, the combined annual meetings of the American Society for Transplantation and Cellular Therapy (ASTCT) and the Center for International Blood & Marrow Transplant Research (CIBMTR). The meetings were held Feb. 15-19 in Orlando and virtually. See UF presenters and authors.
Duane Mitchell, M.D., Ph.D.
Duane Mitchell, M.D., Ph.D., received the inaugural Louis W. Sullivan, M.D., Award from the American Society for Clinical Investigation in recognition of his work to develop innovative immunotherapy treatments for brain cancer.
In addition, he was appointed co-chair of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards, or CTSA, Program Steering Committee. In this new role, Mitchell will work alongside fellow co-chair, Michael Kurilla, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Division of Clinical Innovation at the National Institutes of Health National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences to provide leadership for the CTSA network and its future.
Mei He, Ph.D.
Mei He, Ph.D., was named a senior member by the National Academy of Inventors, or NAI. The honor recognizes He for being an academic inventor who is a rising leader in her field.
Carlos Rinaldi-Ramos, Ph.D., and Valérie de Crécy-Lagard, Ph.D.
Carlos Rinaldi-Ramos, Ph.D., and Valérie de Crécy-Lagard, Ph.D. were elected Lifetime Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The honor is among the most distinctive in academia and recognizes extraordinary impact and achievement across disciplines, from research, teaching and technology, to administration in academia, industry and government, to excellence in communicating and interpreting science to the public.
Samsun Lampotang, Ph.D., FSSH, FAIMBE
Samsun Lampotang, Ph.D., FSSH, FAIMBE, received a $100,000 grant from the Florida Department of Health Bankhead-Coley Cancer Research Program for a study, titled “3D perspective visualization for increasing prostate biopsy accuracy.” He is working on the project with Thomas Stringer, M.D.
Jaclyn Hall, Ph.D., Stephanie Staras, Ph.D., Ji-Hyun Lee, DrPH, Yi Guo, Ph.D., and Elizabeth Shenkman, Ph.D.
Jaclyn Hall, Ph.D., Stephanie Staras, Ph.D., Yi Guo, Ph.D., Ji-Hyun Lee, DrPH, and Elizabeth Shenkman, Ph.D., are coauthors on a poster accepted for the American Society of Preventive Oncology’s 47th Annual Meeting in March in San Diego, titled “Does Having Type 2 Diabetes Increase the Odds of Cervical Cancer Diagnosis? A Nested Case-Control Study of a Florida Statewide Multisite EHR Database.”
In addition, Livingstone Aduse-Poku, an epidemiology Ph.D. student who is mentored by Dejana Braithwaite, Ph.D., and Ting-Yuan D. Cheng, Ph.D., received an NCI Travel Award to attend the conference. His abstract is titled “Associations of Total Body Fat Mass and Skeletal Muscle Index with All-Cause and Cancer-Specific Mortality in Cancer Survivors.”
Jonathan Licht, M.D.
Jonathan Licht, M.D., delivered a seminar on Feb. 1 at the Edward P. Evans Center for Myelodysplastic Syndromes at Columbia University Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Matthew Disney, Ph.D.
Matthew D. Disney, Ph.D., was named the first “Institute Professor” at The Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation & Technology.
Jonathan Chatzkel, M.D.
Jonathan Chatzkel, M.D., presented an abstract, titled “A phase Ib/II study (IMMCO-1) of atezolizumab plus tivozanib in castrate-resistant prostate cancer and certain other immunologically cold tumors,” at the ASCO Genitourinary Cancers Symposium held Feb. 16-18 in San Francisco and virtually. Ji-Hyun Lee, DrPH, Carmen Allegra, M.D., Wayne Brisbane, M.D., Paul Crispen, M.D., Padraic O’Malley, M.D., Thomas George, M.D., FACP, Brian Ramnaraign, M.D., were coauthors.
Angela Starkweather, Ph.D.
Angela Starkweather, Ph.D., was appointed to a two-year term on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Roundtable on Genomics and Precision Health.
Jordan Milner, M.D.
Jordan Milner, M.D., received a $125,000 grant from the Live Like Bella® Pediatric Cancer Research Initiative to study the use of alpha/beta T-cell and B-cell depletion in allogeneic stem cell transplantation in malignant diseases.
Steven Bruner, Ph.D.
Steven Bruner, Ph.D., received a Live Like Bella® Pediatric Cancer Research Initiative grant to research detrimental mutations in the human SRP54 gene that cause inherited bone marrow failure syndromes and progression of pediatric cancers.
Brian Law, Ph.D.
Brian Law, Ph.D., received a $570,000 grant from the Florida Department of Health James & Esther King Biomedical Research Program for a study, titled “Reducing racial disparity in breast cancer survival with a novel synthetic-lethal strategy.” He also received a $100,000 grant from the Florida Department of Health Bankhead-Coley Cancer Research Program for a study, titled “Optimizing novel small molecule activators of Death Receptor 5 for breast cancer therapy.”
Brent Reynolds, Ph.D. and Loic Deleyrolle, Ph.D.
Brent Reynolds, Ph.D., received a $248,052 grant from the Florida Department of Health Live Like Bella® Pediatric Cancer Research Initiative for a study, titled “Intranasal delivery of BMP-4 using plant-derived extracellular vesicles for treatment of pediatric glioma.” Loic Deleyrolle, Ph.D., is the Co-I. In addition, Dr. Deleyrolle served on the UF College of Medicine Scientific Review Committee that reviews research day poster award applications. He is also serving on the Ph.D. Recruiting Committee for the graduate program in biomedical sciences.
John Ligon, M.D.
John Ligon, M.D., gave a virtual presentation, titled “Investigating the Immune Response to RNA-lipid Nanoparticle Vaccines in a Clinical Trial for Canines with Osteosarcoma,” at the Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation Board Meeting” on Jan. 18.
Helen Moore, Ph.D.
Helen Moore, Ph.D., was elected to a two-year term as the vice chair of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Life Sciences Activity Group. SIAM is an international society for applied math with over 14,000 members; Life Sciences Activity Group has over 900 members.
Arun Srivastava, Ph.D.
Arun Srivastava, Ph.D., received a $419,375 R21 grant from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases for a study, titled “Development of optimized AAVrh74 vectors for gene therapy of muscular dystrophies.”
In addition, he received U.S. Patent No. 11,434,260 for “High-transduction-efficiency rAAV vectors, compositions, and methods of use.” Dr. Srivastava was also reappointed to the Editorial Board of the Journal of Virology.
In addition, he gave presentations at the 3rd Annual In Vivo Gene Therapy and Genome Editing Meeting in Miami and the 7th Meeting Translational Research Conference for the Management of NCLS in Lombard, Illinois. He also presented “Development of GenZ AAV Vectors” at 4D Molecular Therapeutics in Emeryville, California; “AAV Genome Optimization Workshop” at Astellas Gene Therapies in San Francisco, California; “AAV: From Almost A Virus to An Awesome Vector” at 4D Molecular Therapeutics in Emeryville, California; and “Development of Optimized Human-Tropic AAV Vectors” at 4D Molecular Therapeutics.
Sherise Rogers, M.D., Kate Hitchcock, M.D., and Thomas George, M.D., FACP
Sherise Rogers, M.D., received an Early Career & New Investigator Travel Award from NRG Oncology for its Winter 2023 meeting, held Jan. 26-28 in Orlando. Kate Hitchcock, M.D., Ph.D., presented the EraSUR trial (A022101/NRG-GI009) during the Gastrointestinal Cancer Committee Workshop. Thomas George, M.D., FACP, served as the colorectal chair.
Ramzi Salloum, Ph.D.
Ramzi Salloum, Ph.D., delivered a seminar, titled “Implementation Science to Advance Evidence-Based Practices in Tobacco Control,” at the Masonic Cancer Center at the University of Minnesota on Feb. 21.
Hiren Mehta, M.D.
Hiren Mehta, M.D., participated in an episode of the American Lung Cancer Screening Initiative podcast. He spoke on lung cancer risk prediction models and early diagnosis.
Meghan Ferrall-Fairbanks, Ph.D.
Meghan Ferrall-Fairbanks, Ph.D., delivered an invited talk, titled “Impacts of Tumor Composition and Host Environment on Ovarian Cancer Platinum-Sensitivity,” during the Cancer Epidemiology Tea Series at H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in Tampa on Jan. 26.
Leighton Elliott, M.D.
Leighton Elliott, M.D., a UF hematology/oncology fellow, was selected to participate in the FDA/ASCO Fellows’ Day Workshop on April 13. This workshop is designed to support trainees interested in drug development by providing an introduction to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), clinical trial design, oncology drug regulatory science and the drug/device approval process.