Investigators at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia lead over 600 clinical trials aimed at improving pediatric care across all specialties. As chief clinical research Officer of CHOP Research Institute, Dr. Aplenc sets the course for the development and oversight of clinical research and clinical research operations across CHOP Research.

Dr. Aplenc’s research centers on pediatric acute myeloid leukemia (AML), with ongoing clinical epidemiology and translational research projects. His clinical epidemiology research focuses on improving adverse event reporting on clinical trials in the Children's Oncology Group (COG) by merging external data sets to COG clinical trial data. He also leverages data set merging for clinical epidemiology investigations in pediatric AML with a particular focus on cardio-oncology and disparities in treatment outcome.

Dr. Aplenc also leads a Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute effort to study medical and patient reported outcomes with various discharge practices after AML chemotherapy administration.

From a translational standpoint, he leads efforts to identify risk alleles for pediatric AML susceptibility and treatment response with genomewide genotyping and next generation sequencing. Finally, he led the recently completed phase III trial for children with AML in the COG and serves as the vice-chair of the COG Strategy AML Committee.