Gregory K. Yurasek, MD

Dr. Stacy Cooper is the Director of the Pediatric Hematologic Malignancy Program, Director of the Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Fellowship Program, and Clinical Director of the Pediatric Oncology Inpatient Program at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Dr. Cooper received her undergraduate degree in Biology and Spanish at the University of Notre Dame. She earned her M.D. at SUNY Upstate Medical University. She completed her general pediatric residency and chief residency at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She completed her pediatric hematology-oncology fellowship with the Johns Hopkins-National Institutes of Health. Dr. Cooper joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in 2015. Her research focuses on clinical research in acute lymphoblastic leukemia, as well as medical education scholarship related to fellowship training. Dr. Cooper is a member of the American Board of Pediatrics, the American Society of Hematology, the American Society of Pediatric Hematology Oncology and the Association of Pediatric Program Directors.

Dr. Margaret Moon is an associate professor of general pediatrics and adolescent medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Her areas of clinical expertise include ethics in clinical practice, ethics education, ethics in research and urgent care pediatrics. Dr. Moon spends her clinical time in the Johns Hopkins Pediatric Emergency Department, where she teaches residents in the urgent care setting. Dr. Moon received her undergraduate degree from Michigan State University. She earned her M.D. from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health. She completed a fellowship in clinical medical ethics at the McLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics of the University of Chicago and was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of Chicago. Her research interests include empirical evaluation of ethics in everyday pediatric practice, teaching and evaluating housestaff education in ethics, and the ethics of community-based research. Dr. Moon is a core faculty member of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, where she is supported as the Freeman Scholar in Clinical Ethics. She serves as an ethics member of the Hopkins IRB. She is also an editor of the newly developed Harriet Lane Continuity Clinic Internet Curriculum.

In her first decade as a pediatric oncologist, Dr. Symons already has shown an impressive ability to juggle multiple research projects, in addition to caring for patients.One of Dr. Symons' research pursuits focuses on using a novel immunotherapy approach to treating both solid tumors and hematologic (blood-borne) malignancies. The basis of her work stems from the theory that cancer patients' immune systems should recognize tumor cells as foreign and destroy them. This doesn't happen, theorizes Dr. Symons, because the immune system attacks only those cells it perceives as dangerous—not cancer cells, which it sees simply as foreign. That's where her research comes into play.Evaluating an experimental therapy, Dr. Symons is pairing donor lymphocytes (white blood cells that activate the body's immune system) with chemotherapy to determine if this combination will "awaken" patients' immune systems to the danger of existing cancer cells and, in turn, elicit an immune response.In a separate yet equally compelling research endeavor, Dr. Symons is working to increase the availability of donors for children whose cancer requires bone marrow transplants (BMTs) as a potentially lifesaving treatment. "It can be challenging to find a 'matched' donor," says Dr. Symons, who explains that only about 40 percent of patients who require a BMT find a matched donor. "Sometimes, we don't have the benefit of time, because remissions can be short-lived. But almost all patients have a half-matched donor: a parent, sibling, or child," adds Dr. Symons, who is examining ways to reduce BMT-related complications ordinarily associated with half-matched donors after ablative (high dose) chemotherapy."Like anything else that's new, it will take some time to prove that this is a feasible option that's safe," she says. But she's optimistic. "It has the potential to revolutionize BMT." Dr. Symons knows it's worth the wait. "Seeing the research I do in the lab translate into clinical trials, then seeing patients in these trials survive long term, is incredibly rewarding," she says.