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
Research Scientist
PinYi.Wang@NationwideChildrens.org

Pin Yi joined the Cripe Lab in September 2008 as a research fellow and has explored new treatment strategies mainly for pediatric solid tumors and to overcome barriers to oHSV therapy for pediatric malignancies. Pin Yi's main project is one of the directions pursue to circumvent the lack of the entry receptor barrier via the “directed evolution” strategy to develop more potent oHSV vectors. Part of the most recent work in the Cripe Lab is focused on understanding the role of both the innate and adaptive immune system in oHSV virotherapy. Pin Yi is experienced in overseeing research including development of long-term goals, budget management, training of personnel, experimental design, 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.

Brooke Nartker
Research Associate
Brooke.Nartker@NationwideChildrens.org

Brooke Nartker is a research associate in the Cripe Lab. She can often be found in the vivarium performing combination studies with HSV1 or in the tissue culture room performing in-vitro studies. She is very interested in the HSV1 clinical trials which pushed her to go to nursing school. She loves that she gets to see the research and clinical side of medicine and is excited to see what the future holds for the Cripe Lab.

Rachelle Srinivas
Research Aide

Rachelle is a student research aide and works on in vivo and in vitro experiments to study the efficacy of oncolytic viruses.

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.