$1.1 Million Awarded to San Francisco Institutions to Support Promising Childhood Cancer Research

Part of $22 Million Awarded in New Grants by the St. Baldrick’s Foundation

SAN FRANCISCO (August 30, 2016) – The St. Baldrick’s Foundation, a volunteer-powered and donor-centered charity dedicated to raising money for childhood cancer research, is proud to award 7 grants, totaling more than $1.1 million, to San Francisco area institutions to support research that aims to find cures and better treatments for pediatric cancers.

Four grants, totaling $507,500, were awarded to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco.

Benjamin Huang, M.D., was granted a $195,000 St. Baldrick’s Fellow award. Huang will use his grant to test novel therapies to find better treatment options for acute myeloid leukemia. William Weiss, M.D., Ph.D., was awarded a $100,000 St. Baldrick’s research grant to study the connection between large chromosomal regions (CNA) and neuroblastoma. Weiss hopes to determine if CNA is a potential candidate for targeted therapy for neuroblastoma.

Based on progress to date, Elliot Stieglitz, M.D., was awarded a new grant, totaling $97,500, to fund an additional year of his St. Baldrick’s Fellow award. Stieglitz is using the latest breakthroughs in scientific technology to determine why some children with juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia (JMML) respond to treatment while others do not. Also based on progress to date, Jean Nakamura, M.D., was awarded a new $115,000 St. Baldrick’s Scholar award, made with generous support from the Morgan and Friends Fund, to develop new experimental models that closely replicates malignant neoplasms, complications of cancer treatments, to better understand how they’re caused, leading to improved cancer prevention strategies.

Three grants, totaling $640,000, were awarded to researchers at Stanford University.

Melissa Mavers, M.D., Ph.D., was awarded a $195,000 St. Baldrick’s Fellow award, made with generous support from the Rays of Hope St. Baldrick’s Hero Fund, to research how natural killer T cells can be used to prevent side effects in cancer patients who have to get a stem cell transplant. Mavers is no stranger to the St. Baldrick’s Foundation – she shaved her head at one of their signature head-shaving events in 2006.

Liora Schultz, M.D., was granted a $330,000 St. Baldrick’s Scholar award to develop targeted methods to disrupt inhibition of anti-tumor immune cells. Based on progress to date, Kara Davis, M.D., was granted an $115,000 St. Baldrick’s Scholar award to focus her research on acute lymphoblastic leukemia cells and how the communication of cancer cells differs between children who recover from leukemia and those who relapse.

Help the St. Baldrick’s Foundation continue to fund the best research, wherever it takes place. Make a donation today.

About St. Baldrick’s Foundation
As the largest private funder of childhood cancer research grants, the St. Baldrick’s Foundation believes that kids are special and deserve to be treated that way. St. Baldrick’s funds are granted to some of the most brilliant childhood cancer research experts who are working to find cures and better treatments for all childhood cancers. Kids need treatments as unique as they are – and that starts with funding research just for them. Join us at StBaldricks.org to help support the best cancer treatments for kids.

###