Division Director - Molecular Oncology & Cellular Therapeutics

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Overview

The Department of Pediatrics at Children’s Mercy (CM) seeks to recruit a creative and scholarly leader to serve as the founding Division Director of our newly established Division of Molecular Oncology & Cellular Therapeutics (MOCT). In close partnership with the Division of Clinical Hematology, Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplant (CHOT), MOCT is the academic home for discovery and translational science in the field of hematology/oncology/transplant. The Division Director will be an influential leader who will expand our current laboratory-based research programs and collaborate with faculty members in CHOT to develop new diagnostic and treatment options for pediatric and young adult hematology and oncology patients.

 

There are currently five principal investigators in MOCT. Funded research includes tumor suppressor pathways, glioblastoma, diffuse midline glioma, infant and other high-risk leukemias, leukemia stem cells, immunogenic cell death and mitigation of acute and delayed radiation exposure. In addition to augmenting existing research programs, a major area of emphasis for the Division Director will be to recruit experienced scientists whose expertise is additive to the entire division and who have a passion for mentoring the next generation of scientists. Children’s Mercy is fortunate to have five available endowed chairs for established scientists whose work is directly relevant to immunotherapy and pediatric malignancies. It is anticipated that the Division Director of MOCT will be appointed to one of these Chairs, with the remaining to be used for strategic recruitments. 

 

In addition to CHOT, the Division Director will collaborate internally with the Genomic Medicine Center (GMC) and the Genomics Laboratory (Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, DPLM), both of which provide advanced cancer genomic sequencing for clinical and research applications. Routine management of all newly diagnosed patients with cancer includes clinical tumor and deep exome germline DNA sequencing using state-of-the-art short-read sequencing on the Illumina NovaSeqX platformed in the GMC. The GMC also performs clinical and research molecular characterization of tumor and germline specimens including advanced sequencing technologies, such as CLIA- and CAP-compliant long-read read 5-base sequencing (HiFi-GS). Furthermore, functional characterization of cells and tissues is facilitated by research platforms including single-cell sequencing, chromatin and RNA-seq. In addition, the GMC has a research platform for patient-derived organoids. The DPLM provides a full clinical molecular testing suite including cytogenetics, pharmacogenetics, clinical microarray, and optical mapping.

 

Externally, the Division Director will facilitate connections between the Children’s Mercy Research Institute (CMRI) and regional research institutions to collaborate on innovative discovery and translational research. CM is the pediatric partner in the NCI-designated Kansas University Comprehensive Cancer Center (KUCCC) and has active research collaborations with both the KUCCC and the Stowers Institute for Medical Research.

 

To achieve the vision of a national-recognized research program, approximately 7,000 square feet of contiguous space is available for programmatic expansion in the CMRI, including wet bench laboratory space, adjacent faculty offices, graduate student and post-doctoral fellow cubicles, and shared equipment bays and rooms. Immunotherapeutics and cellular therapy are also significant opportunities for research and programmatic development. Our vision to lead in the field influenced the construction of a 3,000 square feet GMP facility adjacent to the laboratory space in the CMRI building. We aim to expand discoveries from immunotherapeutics research towards im