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Amelia Langston Named Medical
Director of Winship Cancer Network
Amelia (Amy) Langston, MD, joined the Win-
ship Cancer Institute of Emory University as
medical director of the Winship Cancer Network.
Previously, Dr. Langston was professor and exec-
utive vice chair of the Department of Hematol-
ogy and Medical Oncology and medical director
of the Bone Marrow Transplant and Stem Cell
Amelia Langston, MD
Transplant Program at Emory University.
She will work with Vanessa Bramble, the
director of network development, to foster collaboration with
community health-care organizations in the region. The goal of
the Winship Cancer Network, which launched in January 2016, is
Jordan Scott Orange Receives
Edith and Peter O’Donnell
Award
16
ASH Clinical News
to partner and collaborate with nearby organizations to provide
patients access to innovative cancer research and treatment.
“The Winship Cancer Network will benefit greatly from Dr.
Langston’s depth of clinical oncology experience and knowl-
edge of innovative research discoveries at Winship Cancer
Institute, Georgia’s National Cancer Institute-designated
comprehensive cancer center,” said Walter J. Curran Jr., MD,
executive director of Winship.
Dr. Langston specializes in hematopoietic cell transplanta-
tion and treats patients with hematologic malignancies.
Source: Winship Cancer Institute press release, December 1, 2017.
The Sarah Cannon Fund
Provides $5 Million in
Funding for MCL Research
Projects
Jordan Scott Orange, MD, PhD, professor
of pediatrics and chief of the Section of
Immunology, Allergy, and Rheumatol-
ogy at Baylor College of
Medicine, was awarded
the 2018 Edith and
Peter O’Donnell Award
in Medicine from The
Academy of Medicine,
Engineering and Sci-
Jordan Scott Orange,
MD, PhD
ence of Texas. He was
recognized for his work
in defining natural killer cell deficiencies,
which has helped improve diagnosis and
treatment of immunodeficiencies.
“Learning more about how natural
killer cells work could have an impor-
tant role in the therapy of some of the
most vexing medical conditions that
we face,” said Mark W. Kline, MD, J.S.
Abercrombie Professor and Chairman of
the Department of Pediatrics at Baylor
College of Medicine and Ralph D. Feigin
Chair and physician-in-chief at Texas
Children’s Hospital. “The potential
of his work is just now beginning to
manifest.”
Dr. Orange is also the director of
the Center for Human Immunobiology
at Texas Children’s Hospital. In June,
he will begin a new position as chair of
pediatrics in the College of Physicians
& Surgeons and pediatrician-in-chief of
New York-Presbyterian/Morgan Stanley
Children’s Hospital. The Sarah Cannon Fund at The HCA
Foundation committed $5 million to
The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society for
research programs for mantle cell lym-
phoma (MCL). The funding will support
two multidisciplinary research teams
developing MCL treatment strategies at
the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer
Center in Duarte, California, and Weill
Cornell Medicine in New York.
Selina Chen-Kiang, PhD, professor
of pathology and laboratory medicine
at Weill Cornell Medicine, and her team
are investigating the
efficacy of the breast
cancer drug palbociclib
for the treatment of
MCL. Another team,
led by Larry Kwak, MD,
PhD, vice president and
Selina Chen-Kiang,
PhD
cancer center associate
director for Translation-
al Research & Develop-
mental Therapeutics,
director of the Toni
Stephenson Lymphoma
Center, and Dr. Michael
Friedman Professor in
Larry Kwak, MD, PhD
Translational Medicine
at the City of Hope,
are studying novel immunotherapies to
control MCL, including new antibody-
based therapeutics and chimeric receptor
antigen T-cell immunotherapies.
Source: The Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas news
release, December 2017. Source: The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society news release, January 8,
2018.
UC Santa Cruz Genomics
Institute Receives Funding
for Pediatric Cancer Research
The California Initiative to Advance Pre-
cision Medicine awarded the Treehouse
Childhood Cancer Initiative of the Uni-
versity of California Santa Cruz (UCSC)
Genomics Institute a $500,000 research
grant. This award will supplement the
institute’s work with the California Kids
Cancer Comparison (CKCC), a collabora-
tion between Stanford University and
Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital to
collect and analyze genomic data from
children with cancer.
With this funding, CKCC and UCSC
Treehouse will conduct a 24-month
registry study and evaluate the effec-
tiveness of comparative RNA-sequence
analysis in the clinic, including its
impact on clinical decision-making, pa-
tient and family understanding of and
engagement with genomic