Joanne Lagmay, MD,
The Interim-Chief of the Division of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology at the University of Florida College of Medicine and a nationally recognized leader in pediatric and adolescent/young adult (AYA) sarcoma care. She provides comprehensive, multidisciplinary care for children and AYAs with complex bone and soft-tissue cancers, grounded in both clinical excellence and deep compassion for patients and families.
As Chief, Dr. Lagmay leads the division’s vision to grow UF Health as a national destination program for pediatric and AYA cancer care, advancing innovative therapies while ensuring access to high-quality, family-centered care across Florida and beyond. Her leadership focuses on strengthening clinical programs, expanding early-phase and investigator-initiated clinical trials, and building sustainable infrastructure to support discovery, workforce development, and long-term impact.
Dr. Lagmay’s research integrates early-phase clinical trial design through the Children’s Oncology Group, pediatric and AYA immunotherapy, and translational collaborations across UF Engineering, Veterinary Medicine, Chemistry, Materials Science & Engineering, and Radiation Oncology. Her work includes design of early phase clinical trials in osteosarcoma and pioneering efforts in liquid biopsy and circulating tumor cell technologies for pediatric bone sarcomas, accelerating the translation of scientific discovery to the bedside. She has deep and ongoing collaborations in the AYA cancer research and pediatric palliative care.
Central to Dr. Lagmay’s leadership is a commitment to aligning innovation with compassion —ensuring that scientific progress directly improves the lives of children and families facing cancer. Her partnership with philanthropic supporters is foundational to this mission, enabling transformative growth in care, research, and hope for patients throughout the region.
Program Growth and National Impact
Growth, Stability, and National Standing
• Added one pediatric psychologist and one clinical nutritionist, reinforcing whole-child,family-centered care
• Leadership transition planning underway:
Because of Stop Children’s Cancer’s philanthropic partnership, UF Health’s Division of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology continues to grow with intention, stability, and national impact. Your investment strengthens not only today’s care, but the long-term foundation required to serve children with cancer across Florida and beyond.
National Recognition
UF Health Shands Children’s Hospital’s pediatric cancer specialty program is ranked No. 1 in Florida and No.36 nationally, reflecting continued upward momentum and sustained progress among pediatric cancer programs across the country.
Faculty, Workforce, and Program Capacity
• Recruited two new full-time pediatric oncology faculty
• Strategic recruitment of additional leukemia/lymphoma faculty to sustain one of our largest and most complex services
• Dr. Joanne Lagmay appointed as incoming Division Chief
• Dr. Jordan Milner was recognized as the 2025 Physician of the Year by the UF Health Cancer Institute
• Advanced Practice Provider workforce stabilized, ensuring continuity of care
Training the Next Generation
Under the leadership of Dr. Brian Stover, the fellowship program matched a full complement of trainees, creating a strong pipeline of pediatric hematologist-oncologists at a time of national workforce shortage. These fellows will carry forward the clinical excellence and research innovation made possible through philanthropy.
Expanding Access Across Florida
• Pediatric oncology satellite clinic in Tallahassee opening soon
• Planning underway for expanded presence in Ocala
Goal: bring specialized pediatric cancer care closer to home, reducing travel burden and keeping families together during treatment
Bottom line: Your support builds durable capacity — people, programs, and access.
Research that Reaches Children
From Discovery to First-in-Human Trials
Stop Children’s Cancer funding plays a critical role in moving breakthroughs from the laboratory to the clinic — bridging the space where many promising ideas otherwise stall. This support allows researchers not only to discover new treatment strategies but also to translate them into real-world options for children who urgently need them.
A key part of this process is first-in-human clinical trials. These trials involve treatments that have never been used in people. For children enrolled, this means access to a truly novel therapy — one that has not been offered anywhere else in the world. Reaching this stage requires years of laboratory research, rigorous safety testing, and careful regulatory preparation, all of which depend on sustained funding.
However, recent funding cuts are creating significant delays. They are slowing the opening of new clinical trials and limiting how quickly new treatments can be offered to children with different types of cancer. At the same time, reduced resources in the laboratory are narrowing the pipeline of future therapies, meaning fewer discoveries are able to progress toward clinical testing. Continued donor support is essential to keep this pipeline moving — ensuring that innovative ideas do not remain confined to the lab, but instead reach the children and families who are waiting for new hope.
2025 Philanthropic Investment Summary
• $150,000 — Stop Children’s Cancer/Bonnie R. Freeman Clinical Trials and Innovative Therapies Program Fund (see page seven)
• $100,000 — Lyrics for Life/Stop Children’s Cancer Jeffrey A. Block Research Fund (see page six)
• $50,000 — Stop Children’s Cancer/Kimberly H. Flaitz Research Grant (precision sarcoma vaccine research) (see page six)
• $2.5M Endowment — Stop Children’s Cancer/Bonnie R. Freeman Professor for Pediatric Oncology Research (see page five)
• Stop Children’s Cancer Samuel and Ina Gross Memorial Lectureship Endowment — In 2025, we welcomed Dr. Jeffrey Toretsky as our guest lecturer. Dr. Toretsky is the leader of the molecular oncology program and the chief of the pediatric hematology oncology division at Georgetown.
2025 Breakthrough Areas Advanced
mRNA cancer vaccines: Dr. Elias Sayour is developing a new kind of cancer treatment called an mRNA cancer vaccine, which works by teaching the immune system how to recognize and attack cancer. In simple terms, the vaccine delivers a set of instructions — made of messenger RNA — that tells the body to briefly produce harmless markers that resemble a patient’s cancer. These markers act like
a “wanted poster,” alerting the immune system that cancer cells are dangerous and should be eliminated. Unlike chemotherapy, which attacks both healthy and cancer cells, this approach aims to direct the body’s own defenses precisely at the tumor. Dr.
Sayour’s research has shown that mRNA vaccines can act not only as a personalized guide — tailored to an individual patient’s tumor — but also as a powerful immune wake-up call, helping the immune system respond more strongly to cancer overall. Early studies, including first-in-human trials for aggressive brain tumors, suggest this strategy can trigger robust immune responses with the potential for longer-lasting control of cancer.
For donors, this work represents a paradigm shift: leveraging the same mRNA technology that transformed infectious disease care to create smarter, more targeted, and potentially life-saving cancer treatments for children and adults who urgently need new options.
CART T-cell and immune therapies: CAR T-cell therapy is a cutting-edge treatment that turns a patient’s own immune system into a precision cancer-fighting force. In the simplest terms, doctors take a sample of a patient’s white blood cells — specifically the T cells, which are the body’s natural defenders. In the lab, scientists retrain those T cells so they can better recognize cancer by equipping them with a special “sensor” on their surface called a Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR). This receptor acts like a GPS: it guides the T cells directly to the cancer cells. Once infused back into the patient, these engineered CAR T cells seek out and destroy cancer cells with remarkable precision, much like a trained search-and-rescue team finds its target. The power of CART-cell therapy lies in its ability to offer long-lasting protection. After the modified T cells are infused, they can multiply and patrol the body for months or even years, continuing to guard against cancer’s return. Early results in blood cancers have been dramatic, leading to durable remissions in patients who had few other options. Dr. Castillo’s work is focused on expanding this promising approach to more types of cancer, especially those that have been stubbornly resistant to traditional treatments.
For donors, supporting this project means advancing a therapy that doesn’t just fight cancer — it empowers the patient’s own immune system to win the battle, offering hope for deeper, more sustained cures.
Stem cell transplant innovation and gene therapy: Gene therapy for sickle cell disease is a groundbreaking approach that aims to fix the root cause of the disease, rather than just treating its symptoms. Sickle cell disease is caused by a single error in a person’s DNA that leads red blood cells to become hard, sticky, and sickle-shaped, blocking blood flow and causing severe pain, infections, strokes, and organ damage. In gene therapy, doctors collect a patient’s own blood-forming stem cells and, in a highly specialized laboratory, genetically correct those cells. This is done either by repairing the faulty gene or by switching on a healthy form of hemoglobin — the oxygen-carrying protein in red blood cells — that people naturally have before birth. Once corrected, these cells are returned to the patient, where they can take root in the bone marrow and begin producing healthy red blood cells. The promise of gene therapy It is profound: it offers the possibility of a one-time, potentially curative treatment using the patient’s own cells, eliminating the risk of rejection and freeing patients from a lifetime of pain crises, hospitalizations, and shortened life expectancy.
For donors, investing in gene therapy for sickle cell disease means supporting a future where children and adults are no longer defined by this inherited illness — but instead can live full, healthy lives with the disease truly left behind.
National and Scholarly Impact
Research supported through philanthropy has resulted in landmark publications in Cell, Nature, Nature Medicine, and Nature Biomedical Engineering, positioning UF Health as a national leader in pediatric cancer immunotherapy.
Research Leadership Highlights
Dr. Elias Sayour
• Dr. Sayour is supported by the Stop Children’s Cancer/Bonnie R. Freeman Professor for Pediatric Oncology Research
• UF Innovator of the Year (two consecutive years)
• Top 10 Clinical Achievement, Clinical Research Forum
• The Clinical Research Forum (CRF) is a highly respected national organization made up of leaders in academic medicine, biomedical research, and translational science across the United States. Its members include physician-scientists, research deans, NIH leaders, and senior investigators from major academic medical centers whose work focuses on turning scientific discoveries into real treatments that improve patient care. In short, this is a community of people who shape what the future of medicine looks like. Each year, the Clinical Research Forum selects its Top 10 Clinical Research Achievement Awards, which recognize the most impactful clinical research advances in the nation — work that has already changed, or is clearly poised to change, how patients are diagnosed, treated, or cured. These are not early or speculative ideas; they are practice-changing breakthroughs with strong evidence and real-world implications. Past awardees include researchers whose discoveries led to new cancer therapies, gene therapies, vaccines, and life-saving diagnostic tools. Receiving a Top 10 award places a project among the most important clinical research achievements in the U.S. for that year. It signals that the work is innovative, rigorous, and nationally influential, and that it stands out even among elite academic institutions.
• For donors, a CRF Top 10 designation is a powerful external validation: it means the research you are supporting is not just promising — it is recognized by national experts as transformational science with real impact on patients’lives.
• 10 high-impact publications (2025–2026)
• International recognition for transformational work in mRNA cancer immunotherapy:
• Redefined cancer vaccines by demonstrating nonspecific mRNA as a universal immune activator
• Repurposed validated COVID-19 mRNA platforms for cancer treatment
• Overcame immunotherapy resistance in aggressive brain tumors
• Why this matters:
• Broad applicability across tumor types
• Faster translation to patients
• Paradigm-shifting credibility within the global scientific community
Dr. John Ligon
• Next Gen Scholar, Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network
• 2025 Rising Star of the Year, UF Health Cancer Institute (UFHCI)
• Assistant Director for Translational Research, UFHCI
• Six publications and multiple national invited lectures
Dr. Paul Castillo
• Supported by, Lyrics for Life/Stop Children’s Cancer Jeffrey A. Block Research Fund, Dr. Castillo has:
• 12 publications, including 7 high-impact journals
• Secured funding for CD70 CAR T-cell therapy targeting AML and other hematologic malignancies
Clinical Translation
• Supported by the Stop Children’s Cancer/Kimberly H. Flaitz Research Grant, first-in-human RNA nanoparticle vaccine trials enrolling in osteosarcoma
• The Kimberly Flaitz Research Grant is invested in advancing research on Ewing sarcoma, a rare and aggressive childhood cancer. This work focuses on identifying and targeting the specific genes that drive this disease, allowing scientists to understand why the cancer forms and how it grows. By zeroing in on the genetic “on–off switches” that fuel Ewing sarcoma, this research aims to develop smarter, more precise treatments — therapies designed to attack cancer cells while sparing healthy tissue. For donors, this investment supports science that moves beyond one-size-fits-all treatment toward targeted approaches with the potential for better outcomes and fewer side effects for children and young adults facing this devastating cancer.
• National leadership in immunotherapy trials for glioblastoma, DIPG, and relapsed osteosarcoma
• Phase III universal cancer vaccine trial launching imminently
