James LaBelle, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics

James LaBelle, MD, PhD, provides care for children of all ages with cancer and blood diseases, including leukemia and lymphoma, at the University of Chicago Medicine. A physician-scientist, Dr. LaBelle has a laboratory that focuses on understanding, at a molecular level, the reason that some pediatric cancers do not respond to conventional therapy. One of Dr. LaBelle’s current research investigations focuses on examining a critical network of proteins that regulate whether a cancer cell lives or dies. In 2015, Dr. LaBelle was awarded a grant from the University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center funded by the Hoogland Lymphoma Biobank to support his research on new ways to treat pediatric refractory lymphoma.

The work that Dr. LaBelle is conducting in collaboration with the Hoogland Lymphoma Biobank is inspired by the work he does with children, adolescents, and young adults who suffer from this disease. Specifically, Dr. LaBelle is working on using portions of the actual proteins, or peptides, as drugs and biological tools to uncover and treat specific molecular pathways in diseased and lymphoma cells. His objective is to therapeutically target pathways that lead to cell death in the most resistant forms of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) by using peptides that simultaneously target two key proteins, BCL-2 and p53, that are important factors known to cause DLBCL resistance to standard chemotherapy. By intertwining patient samples from the Hoogland Lymphoma Biobank, chemistry, lymphoma biology, and developmental therapeutics, Dr. LaBelle aims to generate fresh insight into using combination therapeutic peptides to treat B cell lymphomas that are driven by distinct and clinically relevant chemoresistance pathways.

Click here for the full text document on Dr. LaBelle’s research.