Timothy Cripe Lab
Timothy P. Cripe, MD, PhD
Principal Investigator
Timothy Cripe, MD, PhD, is the chief of the Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology/Blood and Marrow Transplant and the Gordon Teter endowed chair in pediatric cancer at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. His research is focused on the laboratory-based development and early phase clinical testing of cellular, viral and gene therapies for pediatric cancers and has been supported by numerous extramural grants including multiple R-, U- and P-level NIH grants. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed manuscripts and deliverd over 220 invited lectures. He is the principal investigator of a T32 training grant in pediatric cancer. He is the former chair of the FDA’s Cellular, Tissue and Gene Therapy Adivosry Committee. He serves as the editor-in-chief of the flagship cancer journal of the American Society of Cell and Gene Therapy, Molecular Therapy Oncology. He is co-founder and board member of Vironexis Biotherapeutics, Inc., a clinical stage cancer gene therapy company.
Mark Currier
Research Program Manager
Mark.Currier@NationwideChildrens.org
Mark Currier has served as Dr. Cripe's lab manager for 19 years. He graduated with his bachelor's degree from the University of Mississippi and completed his master's at Miami University. Throughout his career he has been involved with clinical trials as well as running pre-clinicial trials on mouse tumor models. His goal is to find and help develop a novel biotherapeutic agent that is efficacious against refractory pediatric solid tumors such as alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma (ARMS) and osteosarcoma (OS).
Chun-Yu Chen
Research Scientist
Chun-Yu.Chen@NationwideChildrens.org
Chun-Yu's role in the lab is to understand the influence of the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment on oncolytic herpes simplex virotherapy.
Pin-Yi Wang, PhD
Senior Research Scientist
PinYi.Wang@NationwideChildrens.org
Dr. Wang received her doctorate from University of Rochester with thesis investigating the leukemia initiating cells in a genetically defined mouse model of B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL). Prior to doctorate study, she also obtained a master’s degree in Microbiology and Immunology from her hometown, Taipei Taiwan. She has experience in both basic and translational fields of biomedical research spanning more than 20 years. Dr. Wang joined Dr. Timothy Cripe’s research group in late 2008, focusing on exploding novel oHSV virotherapy to overcome barriers for treating pediatric malignancies. Her recent research focus is to develop AAV gene therapy-based immunotherapeutic to target different types of cancers. She is responsible for vector design, validation and part of the in vitro & in vivo model testing. She is one of the key members in the group involving in research development of long-term goals, training of personnel, data interpretation and final preparation of manuscripts.
Brian Hutzen
Research Scientist
Andrea Glaspell
Research Associate
Andrea.Glaspell@NationwideChildrens.org
Andrea Glaspell is a research associate in the lab. She has her bachelor’s of science in Health Sciences and is currently working on a masters of Healthcare Administration. She joined the Cripe Lab in January 2020 and has been employed at Nationwide Children's Hospital for over nine years. Her main duties in the lab are to assist the program manager with the day-to-day operations such as ensuring the lab has the supplies they need and maintaining the maintenance of lab equipment. She, also, assists lab members in any area of help they may need with their respective studies.
Akila Venkatarmany
MD/PhD Student
Akila Venkataramany is a student in the Medical Scientist Training Program at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. She received her bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences from Cornell University and joined OSU’s program in 2018. She is co-mentored by Timothy Cripe, MD, PhD, and Dawn Chandler, PhD, in the Center for Childhood Cancer Research. Her graduate research focuses on identifying key RNA splicing events in pediatric bone sarcomas (osteosarcoma and Ewing sarcoma) and targeting oncogenic splicing events with antisense oligonucleotides expressed in viral vectors. Following her medical scientist training, Akila plans to attend a pediatric residency program with a research emphasis and eventually complete a hematology/oncology fellowship. Her overall goal is to become a pediatric oncologist and physician-scientist who works toward developing novel and effective therapies for pediatric cancer patients
Emily Ringwalt
Graduate Student
Emily Ringwalt earned her bachelor of science in Biochemistry from the University of Notre Dame. She is now a doctoral candidate at The Ohio State University in the Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology graduate program. Emily researches translational mechanisms for targeting pediatric bone sarcomas. Being co-mentored by Drs. Timothy Cripe and Ryan Roberts, her work has focused on the tumor-intrinsic and immune impacts of combinatorial therapies that include oncolytic virotherapy. She leverages single-cell approaches to identify mechanisms of combinatorial synergy and metastatic colonization.
