News

Formerly known as the St. Baldrick’s – Stand Up to Cancer Pediatric Cancer Dream Team, this team is now the St. Baldrick’s EPICC Team (Empowering Pediatric Immunotherapies for Childhood Cancer).

I have something exciting to tell you, but first, here’s something I heard and quickly scribbled down during a meeting about research priorities: “It’s like we caught lightning in a bottle – and you just don’t know when that will happen again.”

That was one of our expert advisers talking about the amazing, incredibly fast and impactful work of the Stand Up to Cancer – St. Baldrick’s Pediatric Cancer Dream Team, funded jointly by the two organizations from 2013 through 2017.  It was such a perfect description, it has stuck with me for more than a year.

This team of 150 researchers from eight institutions across North America has been working on new immunotherapy treatments for childhood cancers.  In less than four years, their work is already saving lives.

Honored Kid Austin was diagnosed with a high-risk form of acute lymphoblastic leukemia when he was 2 years old. Now a survivor, he was one of the first kids treated on a trial of the immunotherapy Kymriah, which was developed with help from the Dream Team.

Every one of the experts who had looked closely at the team’s work agreed that this was work that must continue.  To me, it was only natural for St. Baldrick’s to make that happen.  And by St. Baldrick’s, I mean you – our donors and volunteers who make the funding possible.

So, I’m thrilled to announce that the Dream Team is back – with a new name and a continuing determination to find cures for childhood cancers.

The St. Baldrick’s – Stand Up to Cancer Pediatric Cancer Dream Team will continue from 2018 through 2022, with primary support from St. Baldrick’s.

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With its recent commitment of $500,000 for the Target Pediatric AML initiative, the St. Baldrick’s Foundation adds another chapter to its long story of support for innovative and impactful research in childhood acute myeloid leukemia (AML).

While great progress has been made over many decades to help children survive the most common childhood cancer – acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) – the same has not held true for children with AML.

St. Baldrick’s is helping change that.

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This month is the official start of spring. Flowers are beginning to bloom, birds are chirping and a shiny new flock of doctors and medical students are about to blossom into childhood cancer researchers. Yep, it’s that time – it’s time to award $2 million in Summer Fellow and Fellowship grants!

These grants encourage and support the newest generation of doctors and students in pursuing childhood cancer research, so they can move the field forward and save the lives of the next generation of kids.

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February 4 is World Cancer Day. On this day, more than 700 kids will be diagnosed with cancer. But YOU can help. Here’s how …

When kids get cancer, a piece of their childhood is taken away. And even if they survive, their lives will never be the same.

But you can do something about it.

This World Cancer Day, let’s take childhood back from cancer.

Here are four easy ways you can help:

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2017 was a big year, full of breakthroughs, incredible stories and some pretty amazing achievements in the childhood cancer world. Join us as we reflect on St. Baldrick’s top 10 highlights of the past year — and make sure you give yourself a pat on the back, because much of this was possible because of YOU!

Are you ready to take a trip down memory lane? Here we go …

1) Passage of the RACE Act

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That’s right — it’s time to take the plunge and register for a St. Baldrick’s event!

Every 2 minutes, a child is diagnosed with cancer.

YOU can make a difference for these kids.

Be a part of the world’s largest volunteer-powered charity for childhood cancer research. Get involved with a St. Baldrick’s event today!

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Usually, we pick one international winner of the Robert J. Arceci Innovation Award, but what happens when there are two equally deserving researchers with big ideas and big hearts for kids with cancer? Read on to find out!

After being nominated for the International Robert J. Arceci Innovation Award, (left) Dr. Franck Bourdeaut and (right) Dr. Jan-Henning Klusmann were both selected by a committee of experts and are being presented with the award today at the annual conference for the International Society of Paediatric Oncology.

Dr. Robert Arceci was a passionate innovator who dreamed big. He was a pioneer who knew that kids with cancer deserve better than what doctors can offer them and that breakthroughs are born from taking risks.

That’s why the international winner of the award established in his memory – the Robert J. Arceci Innovation Award – is given the resources and the freedom to follow their curiosity, pioneering spirit, and their passion for kids’ cancer research, wherever it leads.

Except this year, it’s winners of the Robert J. Arceci Innovation Award!

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They say the early bird gets the worm, but at St. Baldrick’s, the early bird gets a cruise! That’s right – it’s time for the St. Baldrick’s Participant Sweepstakes, when participants who register and raise money early get a chance at the trip of a lifetime. Read on for tales from last year’s lucky shavee and the details on how YOU can be a winner.

Six-time shavee Jim and his family won big through the St. Baldrick’s Participant Sweepstakes — they won a weeklong Disney cruise! Here they are enjoying the beach at Castaway Cay, Disney’s private island in the Bahamas.

When Jim Varagona got an email saying he had won a free trip, he was skeptical. Did he get hacked? Was it a scam?

“I read the email and it looked legit, but you can’t be too sure when being told you’re a prize winner,” he said.

Then he listened to a voicemail he had just received. It was from the St. Baldrick’s Foundation. A six-time shavee and passionate fundraiser for kids’ cancer research, Jim had been randomly picked as the winner of the 2016 St. Baldrick’s Participant Sweepstakes.

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Formerly known as the St. Baldrick’s – Stand Up to Cancer Pediatric Cancer Dream Team, this team is now the St. Baldrick’s EPICC Team (Empowering Pediatric Immunotherapies for Childhood Cancer).

Last week, in the pages of the medical journal Cancer Cell, St. Baldrick’s researchers announced a discovery that could radically transform treatment for kids with neuroblastoma – a new immunotherapy drug candidate that harnesses the immune system to fight cancer.

Neuroblastoma is a cancer that begins in the nerve tissue outside the brain, usually in a child’s abdomen. It strikes very young children, up to about age 7, and is the most common cancer diagnosed in infants. Only about 50% of patients survive the high-risk form of neuroblastoma.

All of this makes this new targeted immunotherapy for neuroblastoma especially good news, but it gets even better.

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Formerly known as the St. Baldrick’s – Stand Up to Cancer Pediatric Cancer Dream Team, this team is now the St. Baldrick’s EPICC Team (Empowering Pediatric Immunotherapies for Childhood Cancer).

St. Baldrick’s supporters, this is a day to celebrate!  You have helped make history. Today, the FDA approved the first gene therapy available in the United States. Called Kymriah, it’s an entirely new way of treating cancer and it’s saving lives.

This “living drug” is for patients with a type of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), a cancer of the blood and bone marrow and the most common form of childhood cancer. Scientists genetically modify a patient’s own immune cells in the lab, then infuse these new cells back into the patient’s body. These modified cells – called CAR T cells or chimeric antigen receptor T cells – then prompt the child’s own immune system to attack and kill leukemia cells. 

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