New Discovery May Hold the Key to Destroying Osteosarcoma
Osteosarcoma is a devastating pediatric bone cancer for which survival rates have not improved in over 30 years. Despite advances in chemotherapy and surgery, 40% of osteosarcoma patients eventually succumb to the disease. However, a recent research study, funded in part by the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, has identified a new gene called Sox2 that may hold the key to eradicating the tumor and preventing relapse of this aggressive type of childhood cancer.
Sox2 is a gene that is required to keep normal bone cells young and immature to encourage their growth. As a result, normal bone stem cells depend on Sox2 for survival. Osteosarcomas are also dependent on Sox2.
St. Baldrick’s Research Helps Improve Cure Rate for Common Childhood Cancer
A recent research study on high-risk acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), funded in part by the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, has improved the cure rate and cut the relapse rate by using an old drug (methotrexate) in a new way.
“It’s just amazing that the funds we help raise go directly to childhood cancer studies like this,” says Melinda Baderman, mother to Spencer, who was diagnosed with ALL when he was 6 and has shaved his head for the Foundation every year since. “It doesn’t go to a bunch of different places. It goes to helping cure our children of cancer. This is huge. It’s amazing.”
St. Baldrick’s Research Outcome in Neuroblastoma
St. Baldrick’s researcher Dr. Alice Yu is developing a new immunotherapy treatment for kids with neuroblastoma.
For many years, doctors had only three ways to treat most cancers: surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. A newer weapon in the fight against cancer is immunotherapy, harnessing the power of the immune system to attack cancer cells.
St. Baldrick’s donations helped fund research that has resulted in the first successful immunotherapy treatment for a childhood cancer, high-risk neuroblastoma.
Neuroblastoma is a cancer of the sympathetic nervous system. The average age of diagnosis is 2, and it’s rare in children over 10 years old.
Most patients have the high-risk form of the disease, and for years, only 1 in 3 of these children survived. With this new treatment, almost half may survive!
St. Baldrick’s Childhood Cancer Research Outcomes
Here are a few of the major accomplishments in childhood cancer research that have been supported by the St. Baldrick’s Foundation – through grants made to researchers at hundreds of institutions, and through the more than $33 million granted since 2005 to the Children’s Oncology Group for cooperative research.
2012 Research Priorities Summit
The St. Baldrick’s Foundation held its second Research Priorities Summit in New York, the weekend of January 7-8, 2012. Nineteen distinguished childhood cancer research experts attended, volunteering their time and expertise to advise the Foundation’s board and grants staff on funding priorities.
The Summit was co-moderated by two nationally recognized leaders in pediatric oncology, William Carroll, M.D. of New York University and Holcombe Grier, M.D. of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
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