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Based on progress to date, Dr. Summers was awarded a new grant in 2020 to fund an additional year of this Fellow award. Early T-precursor ALL (ETP-ALL) is a type of leukemia that is often difficult to treat with currently available chemotherapy. As a result, children with ETP-ALL have high rates of relapse of their leukemia and poorer survival rates than children with other types of ALL, and require more treatment with chemotherapy, often leading to long-term toxic side effects. For these reasons, new treatments for ETP-ALL are needed. MERTK is a protein that is found on the surface of some leukemia cells, including ETP-ALLs. Recently, Dr. Summers and colleagues developed a new medicine that has few toxic side-effects and can be used to kill leukemia cells that have MERTK on their surface. Funded as the Emily Beazley's Kures for Kids Fund St. Baldrick's Fellow, this grant will allow him to test whether and how this new medicine could be used to more effectively treat children with ETP-ALL, leading to improved outcomes and better quality of life.

At the age of 8, Emily was diagnosed with Stage III T-cell lymphoblastic non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and battled through three relapses. Her family prayed for a miracle but discovered Emily herself was the miracle, inspiring a community to come together to show love and change lives. She had a dream of starting a foundation to fund research and named it “Kures for Kids”. Today, Emily's family and friends carry on her dream and her mission in her memory.