It Takes a Team

"There are many hurdles to improving cure rates for pediatric cancer: we need to understand what turns a cell into cancer, what normal cell processes a malignant cell 'hijacks' to survive, grow, and migrate; we need to find new therapies that could potentially be used in children that are more selective for cancer cells and don't just hit every cell in the body; then we have to then test them, in hundreds and even thousands of kids and find out if they really work; and finally we need funding to perform all this research. It really requires a team approach, people to help fulfill all the different and necessary roles.



I am a physician, an M.D. I have spent countless years learning how to diagnose and treat illness in children, how to recognize a 'sick kid' and take care of the child and their family as they endure first the gut wrenching idea that their child has cancer and second the things we will have to do to fight for a cure.



How would someone like me be able to make the critical advances needed to make a difference not only in a single child's life, but in all children suffering from cancer? With the help from St. Baldrick's, because that is what the St. Baldrick's Foundation and their supporters and volunteers do. St. Baldrick's supporters are an essential part of the team, funding the scientists investigating new ways to kill cancer in a cell, to the clinician researchers trying new therapies, to the people like me who are bridging the two worlds, and countless other programs that bolster the general well-being of the children and families as they go on his journey.

 

Funding from the St. Baldrick's Foundation for my laboratory investigations has directly resulted in a better understanding of what makes a pediatric brain tumor cell grow and survive, and now identify a new treatment approach for kdis with pediatric gliomas and astrocytomas. Thank you to the supporters and volunteers of St. Baldrick's, we make a great team!



Amy Keating, M.D.

St. Baldrick's Scholar

Assistant Professor of Pediatrics

Pediatric Bone Marrow Transplant

Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders

The Children's Hospital

The University of Colorado Denver, School of Medicine