Research Grant Advisory Board

Prior Chair of the Children’s Oncology Group (COG), a group of more than 200 leading children's hospitals and cancer centers that bring together more than 9,000 international experts in childhood cancer.

A reviewer for Blood, Cancer, Cancer Chemotherapy and Pharmacology, Cancer Research, Clinical Cancer Research, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Journal of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Leukemia, Leukemia Research.

Associate Professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School, Director of the Molecular Pathology Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital. His laboratory focus is to uncover relapse mechanisms in pediatric cancer, utilizing the zebrafish model.

St Jude Children’s Hospital  - spotlight video
St Jude Children’s Hospital. Has published numerous articles in pediatric soft tissue sarcomas with research interests in high-risk pediatric solid tumors, tumor xenografts, and translational preclinical testing. She has also received several investigator awards.

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He served on the faculty of the Pediatric Branch at The National Cancer Institute where he was involved in numerous clinical trials involving soft tissue sarcomas. He co-chaired the pilot study p9754 involving the role of therapy in osteogenic sarcoma. He is the Principal Investigator of MSKCC IRB pilot clinical trial for patients with newly diagnosed, intermediate, and high-risk rhabdomyosarcoma. He is also collaborating with other MSKCC physicians to develop biologically targeted novel therapies for children with recurrent rhabdo. He is the author of over 40 articles on the care of patients with pediatric sarcomas.

Hematology/Oncology Division Chief, Associate Director of the Center for Clinical and Translational Research at Seattle Children’s Hospital. He is a leader of the COG and the Chair of the Soft Tissue Sarcoma Committee which oversees the conduct of biology studies and clinical trials for rhabdomyosarcoma and other soft tissue sarcomas. He has been the chair of two COG trials.

Pediatric Hematology Oncologist Duke University Hospital, Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, Member of the Duke Cancer Institute Pediatric Hematology Oncologist Duke University Hospital, Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, Member of the Duke Cancer Institute. Has received a multitude of grants and awards in pediatric cancers and rhabdomyosarcoma.

At Cold Spring Harbor coming from the University of Pennsylvania. He runs the Vakoc Laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor Research Institute. He focuses on Cancer Epigenetics Research studying gene expression control. He is the recipient of multiple awards that include AACR Outstanding Achievement in Cancer Research, Forbeck Scholar Award, Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Award, Pershing Square Sohn Prize, and others and has numerous publications.

Section Head, Basic and Translational Research within the Children’s Center for Cancer and Blood Disease. Director, Cancer and Blood Disease Research Program at The Saban Research Institute of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. He served as Head of Pediatric Oncology Branch at NCI and Scientific Director for Clinical Research National Cancer Institute from 1997-2017. He is a past member of the Board of Governors of the Clinical Center at NIH. He serves on a multitude of Scientific Advisory Boards. Dr. Helman’s Lab currently studies the biology and treatment of rhabdomyosarcoma, Ewing’s sarcoma, osteosarcoma, and GIST tumors.

Head, Tumor Evolution and Genomics Section
Lasker Clinical Research Scholar
Pediatric Oncology Branch, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute

Dr. Jack Shern is a pediatric oncologist with the primary interest of developing effective therapies for children and adults with genetic tumor predisposition syndromes, such as neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), and rare solid tumors. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Georgia and completed his pediatric residency at the University of Chicago. Dr. Shern then moved to the Johns Hopkins/NIH fellowship program for pediatric hematology and oncology in the Pediatric Oncology Branch of the NCI, where he is now a Lasker Clinical Research Scholar leading the Tumor Evolution and Genomics Section. Dr. Shern established a translational research program within NCI’s Pediatric Oncology Branch focused on the study of pediatric soft tissue sarcomas including Rhabdomyosarcoma and Malignant Peripheral Nerve Sheath Tumors (MPNST). His research is focused on defining and developing precision therapies targeting the genetic mutations that drive tumorigenesis. His laboratory uses cutting edge genomic and molecular profiling techniques, such as whole genome and single cell sequencing, to discover and profile tumor cells that are responsible for relapse and refractory disease. Dr. Shern is actively engaged in the NCI-supported Children's Oncology Group, studying the use of mutational information to inform diagnosis and management of pediatric soft tissue sarcomas, and he also plays integral roles in the Cancer Moonshot funded Rare Tumor Initiative and the My Pediatric and Adult Rare Tumor Network (MyPART), as well as in NCI’s Childhood Cancer Data Initiative (CCDI).

Assistant Professor, Pediatric Oncology

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center

Dr. Patience Odeniyide is a pediatric oncologist at the Johns Hopkins University Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her research focuses on RAS-directed therapies for pediatric rhabdomyosarcoma and her clinical expertise is in the treatment of pediatric solid tumors. Dr. Odeniyide received her undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned her MD from Indiana University School of Medicine. She did her general pediatric residency at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed her pediatric hematology/oncology fellowship at Johns Hopkins/ NIH Pediatric Oncology Branch Pediatric Hematology/Oncology joint fellowship training program in 2017. She completed her Ph.D. in cellular and molecular medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 2022. Dr. Odeniyide aims to develop and implement novel molecularly targeted therapeutics to treat pediatric cancers with genetic alterations. Her research is focused on the application of small molecule therapeutics for tumors with RAS mutations, a common mutation in cancer for which few effective targeted therapies exist. Her goal is that her research will bring more effective therapeutic options for pediatric sarcoma patients.

Genevieve C. Kendall, PhD, is a principal investigator in the Center for Childhood Cancer at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. Dr. Kendall received her PhD in Molecular Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), before performing her postdoctoral studies focused on pediatric oncology with Dr. James Amatruda at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Dr. Kendall’s research is focused on developing basic and translational models of fusion-positive rhabdomyosarcoma. Specifically, her group studies fusion-oncogene driven rhabdomyosarcoma using cross-species comparative oncology to delineate the underlying biology of the disease and then apply that knowledge to identify novel molecular targets. The Kendall lab’s ultimate goal is to apply their models as discovery-based tools and to derive mechanistic insights to improve outcomes for children with cancer.