Based on progress to date, Dr. Knoechel was awarded new grants in 2018 and 2019 to fund additional years and named the Emily Beazley's Kures for Kids St. Baldrick's Scholar. T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) is a cancer of childhood and young adults that originates from the white blood cells in the bone marrow. It is a disease for which the initial treatment is often unsuccessful and the disease comes back quickly. Dr. Knoechel is investigating the epigenetic state changes that are responsible for drug resistance in T-ALL to develop new treatment strategies for patients with relapsed leukemia.

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 through the Emily Beazley's Kures for Kids Fund, a St. Baldrick's Hero Fund.

Based on progress to date, Dr. Knoechel was awarded a new grant in 2014 to fund an optional third year of this fellowship. Approximately 15% of children with leukemia have a form known as T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Current chemotherapy initially works very well in this type of ALL, however many of these patients have a recurrence early in their treatment. There are factors that are known to add to the development of a cancer and how well drugs work against it. These factors are known as chromatin regulators. Birgit Knoechel, M.D., Ph.D., Porter Dowling St. Baldrick's Fellow, is studying a chromatin regulator, BRD4, and how effective it is in reducing the drug resistance in T-cell ALL. These findings, along with a newly developed inhibitor that specifically targets BRD4, may provide a new approach to the treatment of T-cell ALL.

This grant is named for Porter Dowling, in recognition for raising more than $1.2 million for childhood cancer research through the St. Baldrick's Foundation.