The American Society of Hematology, or ASH, presented Abstract Achievement Awards to Bradley Stockard, Pharm.D., and Abdelrahman Elsayed, M.Sc., graduate research assistants in the department of pharmacotherapy and translational research in the University of Florida College of Pharmacy, during the 60th ASH Annual Meeting, Dec. 1-4, in San Diego. The merit-based award is reserved for trainees with high-scoring abstracts.
Stockard’s award-winning research examined the metabolite abundance differences that may be linked to chemotherapy response and treatment outcomes in acute myeloid leukemia, or AML, patients. Several genetic and cytogentic abnormalities are known to contribute to AML disease progression, but understanding how molecular mechanisms contribute to variation in treatment outcomes is still limited. Stockard generated metabolomics profiles of pediatric AML patients and was able to identify multiple known metabolites associated with difference in chemosensitivity and clinical response outcomes, such as minimal residual disease and overall survival.
Elsayed’s study focused on understanding the genomic landscape of AML. Multiple studies have focused on understanding the transcriptomic and epigenetic landscape of AML, however, a genome-wide analysis of SNPs in pediatric AML has not yet been investigated in depth. His research identified genetic variants significantly associated with treatment response and risk of relapse of patients enrolled in the multi-center AML02 clinical trial. Reported variants were found mapping to multiple genes known to be over expressed in AML, or previously reported to be associated with drug resistance in cancer treatment.
Elsayed and Stockard are mentored by Jatinder Lamba, Ph.D., M.Sc., an associate professor of pharmacotherapy and translational research. Elsayed also gave an oral presentation at the ASH meeting.