$2.6 Million Grant Awarded to Pediatric Leukemia Therapy Exploration

Awards totaling $2.6 Million Support Exploration of Therapeutic Strategy for Adult and Pediatric T-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

New Brunswick, N.J., February 6, 2024 – Daniel Herranz Benito, PhD, PharmD, resident researcher at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, the state’s leading cancer program and only NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center together with RWJBarnabas Health, and associate professor of pharmacology and pediatrics at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, has received a total of $2.6M to support his research on acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), an aggressive type of leukemia that affects both children and adults. These awards include:

• $1.8M from the National Cancer Institute (R01CA285513) to explore adult T-ALL. The project period is 5 years.
• $800,000 from Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer to explore pediatric T-ALL. The project period is 4 years.

Investigators will explore if inhibiting (blocking) pyruvate kinase (PKM), a special type of protein, will be an effective treatment for the disease, especially when used alongside other therapies. Preliminary findings suggest that inhibiting PKM, particularly in combination with NOTCH1 signaling inhibitors, may enhance T-ALL treatment outcomes.

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