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Jaap Jan Boelens MD PhD
Chief Attending TCT Service
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
New York, NY
USA
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I am a pediatric hematologist/oncologist and have served as the Chief of the Pediatric Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapies Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) since 2018. Previously, I spent a decade developing a cord blood transplant program in the Netherlands that is now the largest in Europe. I am continuing to build on this work by looking for ways to incorporate cellular therapies with transplants. I have a special interest in rare diseases that are potential indications for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HCT), particularly lysosomal storage diseases, and in finding strategies to get better disease control in malignant diseases. My research focuses on using core blood to develop advanced therapies that target blood disorders at the cellular level, including dendritic cell vaccines (anti-acute myeloid leukemia [AML], antineuroblastoma). We are also creating mathematicalmodels that can help us predict how a young person’s immune system will respond to receiving such treatments. Additionally, I am interested in designing a predictable low-toxicity conditioning regimen usingpharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) models (e.g., anti-thymocyte globulin [ATG], fludarabine, clofarabine) to better predict immune reconstitution, which is necessary for the optimal effect of vaccines. At MSK, I also serve as Director of the Immune Discovery & Modeling Service (IDMS) core facility (7 full-time employees, 3 fellows), a role that will be instrumental to the analyses that will be conducted in the proposed project.