At the 2026 CLL Global Research Foundation Alliance Meeting, Dr. Natalia Timofeeva discussed ongoing research into the metabolism of leukemia cells, and shared her perspective on the positive impact of CLL Global Research Foundation funding.
Guest
Natalia Timofeeva, MD, Department of Translational Molecular Pathology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Transcript:
Dr. Natalia Timofeeva:
My name is Natalia Timofeeva. I’m a post-doctoral fellow at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Dr. Varsha Gandhi’s lab where we study chronic lymphocytic leukemia. I have a clinical background and I’m a trained hematologist – clinical hematologist – from Russia. So, my interest in CLL, it came from interacting with patients with CLL and seeing how challenging their relapses can be. So, this is why I focused on research besides my clinical work. And transferring from clinical work to research was challenging for me because I did not have extensive lab experience. And CLL Global Research Foundation was open to new ideas and to new researchers with a diverse background like mine.
So, they supported my post-doctoral fellowship at MD Anderson Cancer Center and this has allowed me to start my first major research project that generated my expertise and preliminary data for further investigations and projects.
So, this project funded by CLL Global is focusing on metabolic rewiring in CLL cells. So, we’re basically trying to understand how leukemia cells adapt their metabolism in order to survive. And especially we are interested how they do this under therapeutic pressure.
So, our work at MD Anderson is very unique because we have access to patient samples.
And we can test our hypothesis not only in classic cell line models or animal models, but also, we can test in the leukemic cells that we derive directly from the patients. So, in this case, we can test metabolic inhibitors alone or in combination with other targeted drugs and forward the therapeutic targets that can be used further in the clinic.
For me, CLL Global support was really meaningful because I have a clinical background and classic funding mechanisms for me were not available because I don’t have me extensive research experience. So, CLL Global provided me opportunity to build my own unique career path that combines both clinical perspective in my research goal.
So, I was able to work on my first major project under supervision of Dr. Gandhi. And also, I built my own expertise, I learned advanced laboratory techniques. And I built that confidence to generate new data, make new discoveries, and apply for new grant opportunities now as an independent investigator.
I’m an early-stage investigator and securing funds nowadays is especially challenging, especially for next generation investigators. So, our ideas are innovative, but it may be considered risky. So, the support from philanthropic organizations like CLL Global is really important for us because it gives us unique opportunity to pursue our ideas and make new discoveries, and this wouldn’t be possible otherwise.