OSU Receives $6.25M SCOR Grant Renewal to Continue Leukemia Drug Development

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society has awarded a five-year, $6.25 million Specialized Center of Research (SCOR) grant renewal to a team of investigators at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute who will use the funds to further their work in developing experimental therapeutics for the treatment of adult leukemia. 

Dr. John Byrd, associate director for translational research, is principal investigator for the SCOR grant, which initially was awarded in 2005 for the same amount and involved more than a dozen researchers working on five projects and four clinical trials. 

With the previous grant, researchers developed and improved experimental drugs to fight chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), focusing particularly on cases with genetic characteristics that made the disease more resistant to therapy.  Almost 15,000 Americans are diagnosed with CLL annually, according to the American Cancer Society. The disease has no cure. 

In the newly awarded grant, Byrd and his team will build upon their previous work to include investigations not only of CLL, but also acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), which in many cases present similar challenges. 

For more information, see the release from OSU Medical Center.