The Hematologic Malignancies and Cellular Therapies (HMCT) program is a multidisciplinary clinical, basic and translational research effort whose overall goal is to improve outcomes for patients with hematological malignancies. The broad, long-term goal of the HMCT Program is to build on and extend the current knowledge in the field of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, immunotherapy and hematological malignancies, and to develop novel strategies for improving therapeutic results in patients with hematological malignancies through a collaborative and integrated approach involving the basic, translational and clinical investigators of the Program. The scientific goals of the Program are: 1) To understand hematopoietic stem cell development and control of differentiation and to optimize the use of allogeneic and autologous transplantation of hematopoietic stem cells and compare various alternative sources of hematopoietic stem cells for allogeneic transplantation; 2) To understand the basic biology of graft versus tumor (GvT) and to explore new ways to induce GvT effects and improve immune reconstitution without significant graft versus host disease (GvHD) following allogeneic stem cell transplantation; 3) To develop genomic signatures for hematological malignancies and evaluate the importance of different signaling mechanisms in leukemogenesis or lymphomagenesis; 4) To understand the biology of T cells and their roles in cancer immunology and immunotherapy; 5) To develop adoptive immunotherapy with natural killer (NK) cells and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, and active immunotherapy with dendritic cell (DC)-based vaccine trials in combination with Toll-like receptor (TLR) agonists and/or immune checkpoint blockade strategies for hematological malignancies; 6) To study the biology of B cells and its implication s in hematologic malignancies, vaccine design and chronic GvHD; 7) To identify new cellular and stromal targets for therapy with antibodies or small molecules, leading to evaluation of various labeling techniques, such as using radiolabels or diphtheria toxins, of small molecules and antibodies with subsequent clinical evaluation of safety and efficacy; 8) To design and execute Phase I and Phase II clinical trials in hematological malignancies based on novel laboratory discoveries within the Program. The Program includes 43 primary and 9 secondary members from 9 basic and clinical departments within Duke University. Total direct funding for program members is $54M, of which $36M (67%) is from peer- reviewed sources. From 2009-2013, program members published 707 papers in peer- reviewed journals cited in PubMed. Of these publications, 86 (12.2%) are the result of intra-programmatic collaborations, 101(14.3%) are from inter-programmatic collaborations, and 29 (4.1%) are from both intra- and inter-programmatic collaborations.
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