Grants Search Results

Based on progress to date, Dr. Almaliti was awarded a new grant in 2025 to fund an additional year of this International Scholar grant. There is no nice way to tell someone they've got a brain tumor, and with a child it's unimaginable. In fact, brain tumors are the leading cause of solid tumor cancer death in children. Proteasome inhibitors are a recently discovered drug class that is effective in many types of cancer and have reduced side effects to normal cells. Dr. Almaliti aims to develop novel potent and selective proteasome inhibitors that will specifically kill brain cancer in children. This innovative approach should result in the discovery of new clinical leads for treating brain cancers in children.

This grant is funded by and named for Luke's Army Pediatric Cancer Research Fund. This Hero Fund was created in memory of Luke Ungerer who brought smiles and sunshine wherever he went with plenty to share with everyone. He battled a brain tumor with a positive spirit and inspired others with his courage in his short life. This fund intends to carry on Luke’s legacy of positivity with the hope that it will ripple across many lives for many years to come.

Based on progress to date, Dr. Yang was awarded a new grant in 2024 and 2025 to fund an additional year of this Scholar grant. Hepatoblastoma is a very rare liver tumor diagnosed mainly among children younger than five years of age. Since it is hard to collect enough cases to study, researchers have not fully evaluated germline risk factor, i.e., the genetic information inherited from parents. Dr. Yang and colleagues have generated the largest germline genetic dataset for hepatoblastoma in the world, with which they can study the genetic causes of both onset and survival. They aim to better understand these genetic mechanisms to facilitate early detection and possibly identify targets of therapy for hepatoblastoma.

This grant is named for Julia's Legacy of Hope, a Hero Fund that honors Julia's positive, courageous spirit and carries out her last wish: "no child should have to go through what I have experienced". Diagnosed at 16 with Ewing sarcoma, Julia fought cancer and survived only to be stricken by a secondary cancer as a result of treatment. Her family is raising awareness and funds for research for Ewing sarcoma, as well as issues impacting Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) patients.

Limited progress has been made over the last 30 years against kid brain tumors, especially those in the thalamus and the pons (Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma, DIPG), a specific location in the brain. Radiotherapy (RT) is the only treatment available that can prolong the life of children with the most aggressive form of brain tumors. Recently, RT is recognized to activate the immune system against multiple tumors. However irradiated kid brain cancers always regrow which suggest that RT is not activating immunity against these tumors. Understanding why this phenomenon is happening is critical to develop strategies that will exploit the immune stimulation from RT to control and cure brain cancer. The activation of cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) by RT can be responsible for treatment resistance and the lack of immune stimulation of kids brain cancers. Dr. Vanpouille-Box's initial results show that stopping the immunosuppression of CAFs with a fibroblast activating protein alpha (FAP) blocker re-activates the immune system against irradiated pediatric brain tumors. Thus, blocking CAF emerges as a novel approach to prevent brain cancer regrow and to activate immunity in irradiated brain cancer. She proposes to: 1) Define the role of CAF in mice models of pediatric brain cancer 2) Determine the efficacy of CAF and EGFR blockade in irradiated pediatric brain cancer. Dr. Vanpouille-Box and colleagues hope to find that: - CAF stop the immune stimulation of irradiated pediatric brain tumors - blocking CAF immunosuppression works well to reactivate immunity against irradiated brain cancer, especially on the context of epidermal growth factor receptor therapy.

This grant is named for the Pray for Dominic Hero Fund. The fund was established in honor of Dominic Liples who lived with joy. He is remembered for compassion and determination while he faced his own difficult battle with a rare and aggressive brain cancer. The Pray for Dominic fund carries on Dominic's legacy of joy and hope by funding research for high-grade gliomas.

Brain and spine tumors are the leading cause of cancer-related death in children and adolescents. While cure can sometimes be achieved with conventional chemotherapy, surgery, and/or radiation, prognosis is dismal for patients whose aggressive brain/spine tumors progress despite these treatments. There is a critical need to develop new effective, well-tolerated therapies for children, adolescents, and young adults with refractory high-grade brain/spine tumors. Lutathera is a targeted radiotherapy which binds to tumor cells that express somatostatin receptors, causing tumor cell death through localized release of radiation, with minimal side effects. Many pediatric and young adult high-grade brain/spine tumors express somatostatin receptors, making them ideal targets for this therapy. Dr. Lazow is conducting a clinical trial to assess the safety and effectiveness of Lutathera in children and young adults with recurrent high-grade brain/spine tumors. Within this trial, she will also 1) evaluate how somatostatin receptor expression varies across different brain/spine tumors and determine clinical, imaging, pathology, and genetic characteristics which correlate with that expression, 2) identify imaging and molecular biomarkers predictive of response to Lutathera and/or disease recurrence, and 3) perform radiation dosimetry to establish optimal dosing of Lutathera in children and young adults, ensuring adequate tumor penetration while minimizing toxicity. If Lutathera proves safe and effective in treating children and young adults with refractory brain tumors, further studies will be planned to expand to a larger patient population and eventually incorporate Lutathera into upfront treatment backbones for these aggressive diseases.

This grant is funded by and named for the Miracles for Michael Fund, a St. Baldrick's Hero Fund created in memory of Michael Orbany who was diagnosed with medulloblastoma when he was 6 years old. After completing initial treatment, his cancer relapsed within a year and he passed away at the age of nine. Michael had unwavering faith and perseverance, wanting most of all to make others happy. This fund honors his tremendous strength to never ever give up.

Based on the progress to date, Dr. Young was awarded a new grant in 2024 to fund an additional year of this Fellow grant.

Osteosarcoma is a bone tumor that usually occurs in children and young adults and can be deadly especially when the tumor spreads to other body parts. The treatment strategy for this disease has not seen significant improvement in over 30 years, and there is no specific treatment for tumors that have spread throughout the body. In this project, the major goal is to identify factors that control the spread of osteosarcoma in order to develop new therapies to extend the lives of patients. Currently, Dr. Young is investigating whether osteosarcoma cells block the activation of one part of the patient's immune system, protecting the cancer cells from an immune attack and allowing them to spread throughout the body. This work has the potential to uncover new treatments to harness the immune system to fight this devastating disease.

This grant is named for the Team Jackson Hero Fund. The fund was established in honor Jackson Schmitt who died six days after his diagnosis with osteosarcoma from a stroke. Jackson’s story was told worldwide and his legacy lives on through funding life-saving osteosarcoma research.

This grant supports a dedicated Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) Clinical Research Nurse to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

This grant supports a dedicated Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) Clinical Trials Research Associate to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

This grant supports a dedicated Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) Clinical Research Coordinator to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

Precise understanding of the basic mechanisms by which childhood cancers develop is essential to design tailored and superior treatments for cancer patients. These treatments are expected to cure and avoid long-term complications in cancer survivors. In many instances, we turn to models to reproduce human cancers, but the success of this strategy depends on how accurately we can unravel the origin of the disease. This project is based on Dr. Dominguez-Sola and colleagues recent findings on the origins and cellular basis of Burkitt lymphoma, a most aggressive form of childhood lymphoma with little treatment alternatives. This project will use unprecedented models of this cancer type to expand our understanding of the mechanisms of disease and identify therapeutic strategies that are less toxic, more effective, and superior to those currently available in the clinic.

This grant is funded by and named for Jack's Pack - We Still Have His Back, a St. Baldrick's Hero Fund. Jack Klein was a ten year old who loved life, laughing and monkeys. During his illness, his community of family and friends near and far rallied around him under the moniker "Jack's Pack". Their slogan was "We have Jack's Back". After Jack succumbed to Burkitt's Lymphoma, his "pack" focused their energy and efforts to funding a cure...just as Jack would have wanted.

Based on progress to date, Dr. Reitman was awarded a new grant in 2022 to fund an additional year of this Fellow award. Brainstem gliomas are deadly brain tumors that affect children. The only effective treatment is radiation therapy, but despite this treatment all children with this disease eventually experience growth of the tumor and eventually death. As the Emily Beazley's Kures for Kids Fund St. Baldrick's Fellow, Dr. Reitman will test if treatments that enhance the efficacy of radiation therapy can improve survival in the laboratory. This could lead to new clinical trials aimed at helping children with brainstem gliomas to survive longer.

This grant is funded by and named for Emily Beazley's Kures for Kids Fund. At the age of 8, Emily was diagnosed with Stage III T-cell lymphoblastic non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and battled through three relapses. Her family prayed for a miracle but discovered Emily herself was the miracle, inspiring a community to come together to show love and change lives. She had a dream of starting a foundation to fund research and named it “Kures for Kids”. Today, Emily's family and friends carry on her dream and her mission in her memory.

Cancer immunotherapy has demonstrated great potential for treating cancer. However, challenges such as 1) the lack of ideal targetable tumor antigens; 2) severe toxicity due to off-target interactions; and 3) tumor-mediated immunosuppression are limiting the success of immunotherapies to be broadly applicable. To potentially overcome these challenges, Dr. Wu and his colleagues have developed a programmable synthetic gene circuit platform that enables tumor-localized therapeutic payload production, for recruitment and activation of immune cells: Tumor Immuno-therapy by Gene-circuit Engineered Response (TIGER). This strategy makes use of the body's own immune system to kill tumor cells. Gene circuits (highly engineered DNA sequences that work together), delivered systemically, will be turned on by the presence of two cancer-specific signatures, therefore only be activated within cancer cells and not normal cells. Cancer cells will be forced by the activated gene circuits to produce immunomodulators. Dr. Wu has demonstrated that TIGER mediates robust therapeutic efficacy in vivo in solid tumors. They have also identified sensors that can distinguish high-grade stem-like glioma cells from non-stem-like glioma cells. To further accomplish clinical translation of this platform, several advances are required: 1) identification of tumor sensors that efficiently detect highly heterogeneous primary patient tumors, to optimize tumor-targeting efficiency and specificity; and 2) optimization of therapeutic output combinations for achieving maximal efficacy. This project will focus on advancing the above two aspects to facilitate clinical translation of TIGER to treat pediatric high-grade glioma and overcome existing barriers to effective immunotherapy.

The first year of this grant is funded by and named for the Kai Slockers Pediatric Cancer Research Fund. Kai was diagnosed at 2½ with Atypical Teratoid Rhabdoid Tumor (ATRT), a rare and very aggressive brain cancer. Within two weeks of diagnosis, he passed away, a mere 3 months shy of his third birthday. When Kai took his last breath, the cloudy sky opened up with a bright ray of sun that streamed through the windows of his hospital room – the darkness of the disease was replaced with the light of hope and the peace of no more suffering. Whenever the sun is out, his family thinks of him, assured that his legacy of hope shines on. In his brief life, Kai shared his warmth, energy, goofy sense of humor, and caring heart with all those he met. This Hero Fund was created in his memory and will support research to help other kids with cancer have a better chance to fight and survive. It has a special focus on brain tumor research, specifically treatments that could minimize the harsh effects of brain tumor treatment. The Slockers family hopes to continue his legacy of light and hope through the funding of childhood cancer research.

A portion of this grant is generously supported by the Derick the Defeater Fund, a St. Baldrick's Hero Fund. Derick was a hero in so many ways. Diagnosed with medulloblastoma at the age of six, he endured 2 years of treatment with determination and a positive spirit. He inspired friends and family with his smile and charisma, even advocating for other children fighting cancer and teaching everyone what it meant to be brave. Derick’s courage lives on in a comic book his friends created called “Derick the Defeater” about a superhero who fought evil villains that looked like cancer cells. This Hero Fund honors his legacy of helping others through the funding of childhood cancer research.

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common cancer of children, and although treatment is considered largely successful, in many cases leukemic cells stop responding to chemotherapy and re-emerge. As a consequence, ALL relapse remains a leading cause of childhood cancer-related death. Dr. Aifantis will test the possibility that the bone marrow microenvironment surrounding the leukemia supports the growth of disease and protects leukemia cells from chemotherapy. Together with colleagues he generated the first map of the ALL immune cell microenvironment allowing identification of novel players within the remodeled leukemic bone marrow that promote leukemia survival. They found that high levels of a specific cell type, known as non-classical monocytes, in ALL patient blood and bone marrow correlates with inferior patient survival. They demonstrated that depletion of leukemia-supporting monocytes enhances killing of leukemic cells with specific ALL therapies. In this project Dr. Aifantis will investigate the processes giving rise to monocytes capable of supporting leukemia survival. Further, he will use novel model systems to test whether targeting monocytes enhances responses to a range of existing ALL therapies as well as emerging approaches, such as Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, that utilize a patient's own immune system to kill leukemic cells.

Alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma is one of the most aggressive and difficult to treat tumors in children. If not caught early, metastatic disease has a dismal 5-year survival of less than 5%, even after the most intensive chemotherapy possible. Even in the rare circumstances when these children do well, the long-term side effects of the intensive chemotherapy are debilitating. We can, and must, do better. We have known for some time that the cause of alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma in 60% of the most aggressive cases is a specific genetic abnormality. This genetic mistake creates a new gene, and Dr. Hiebert will determine how this new gene causes cancer and determine what would happen to these sarcoma cells if we had a drug specific for this new gene. To do this, he has engineered alveolar sarcoma cells grown in the lab so that this cancer gene can be quickly turned off by an existing drug. This allows, for the first time, the treatment of these sarcoma cells with a specific drug to define all of the events that occur in the first few minutes to several days of drug treatment to establish that inhibition of this new cancer gene is a viable therapeutic strategy.

This grant is generously supported by Rachael Chaffin’s Research Fund, a Hero Fund created in memory of a young girl who loved life. Rachael loved people, animals and the outdoors. It was heartbreaking when she was diagnosed with Rhabdomyosarcoma in the summer of 2013 at the age of 11. With a positive attitude and determination, Rachael began her long battle with cancer. She truly believed she would beat cancer so she could go on to help others. In 2014, Rachael organized a team of family and friends called “Kicking Cancer with Ray Ray” to raise funds for St. Baldrick’s and they continue the tradition today. This Hero Fund honors Rachael’s passion to find a cure for kids’ cancer and carries on her legacy of increasing awareness of childhood cancer to find better treatment options and cures through research.

Over the past 10 years, we have made great strides in the diagnosis of Medulloblastoma, the most common malignant brain tumor of childhood. These advances have come from widely collaborative efforts to perform DNA sequencing on tumor specimens. This effort led to the identification of major subtypes of Medulloblastoma and a recognition that these subtypes are associated with differences in response to standard treatments and survival. Lagging behind, has been an understanding of the molecular mechanisms that drive relapse of Medulloblastoma. This occurs in 30-40% of Medulloblastoma patients and as yet, there are no curative options. As the recipient of the Thumbs Up Fund to Honor Brett Haubrich St. Baldrick's Research Grant, Dr. Rubin and his team members are proposing a novel clinical trial to address this pressing unmet need. Their trial, brings together what has been learned from sequencing Medulloblastoma and the recently developed ability to test the sensitivity of an individual patient's Medulloblastoma cells to hundreds of drugs simultaneously. The long-term goal is to use the combination of drug testing and DNA sequencing to design personalized treatments for relapsed Medulloblastoma patients. Success in this effort would not only provide new treatments for relapsed Medulloblastoma, but would also provide a new paradigm for personalized approaches to the treatment of all pediatric brain tumors.

A portion of this grant is funded by and named in honor of The Thumbs Up Fund to Honor Brett Haubrich, a St. Baldrick's Hero Fund. Brett is remembered for his kindness, his joy in making others happy and his faith even through his 3 ½ year battle with anaplastic astrocytoma, a difficult to cure brain cancer. Brett was diagnosed at the age of 11 and endured treatments and laser surgery which impacted his motor and speech functions. Yet he was always positive, often giving his signature “thumbs up” as a symbol of hope. In his honor, Team Brett began participating in St. Baldrick’s head shaving events in 2015 and each year, raised over $10,000. This Hero Fund hopes to raise funds for childhood cancer research for brain tumors like Brett’s so other families would have more options for cures.

We know that mental health and physical health are closely connected. For example, teenage cancer patients who receive bone marrow transplants have high rates of anxiety, depression and other mental health issues, which have in turn been associated with relapse and even death rates. Researchers have recently discovered that the immune system may be an important link between the mind and the body -- psychological stress can create a specific pattern of molecular responses in immune cells, which causes inflammation and may produce poor outcomes in cancer. To see if the molecular response pattern indeed associates with altered immune cell function and with mental health symptoms, Dr. Taylor will study blood samples and quality-of-life surveys that are collected from teenage patients undergoing bone marrow transplant. If we can understand the biology of how a teen's mental state affects the cancer in their body, we can develop better ways to improve both psychological and medical outcomes in these vulnerable patients.

This grant funds a student to complete work in pediatric oncology research for the summer. There has been little success in curing high risk AML patients, with survival rates remaining at < 25%. This highlights our current reliance on highly intensive cytotoxic therapies and stem cell transplant, and their inadequacies. This project studies the combination of novel target discovery with state-of-the-art stem cell expansion technology. Protein science provides a unique opportunity to generate one of the most impactful therapeutic discoveries in childhood AML in the last 40 years, with minimal toxicity. The summer intern will assist in investigating the impact of drugs on cancer targets while minimizing toxicity toward healthy cells. Results will be used to help identify critical genes involved in cancer growth and disease resistance, and to leverage future work in drug development.

This grant funds an undergraduate student to complete work in pediatric oncology research for the summer. This project will validate a drug for the medulloblastoma, a type of brain tumor, specifically tumors that spread from the original cerebellar location to the covering of the brain and spine (the meninges). This grant is named for the St. Baldrick's Foundation Staff whose generous gifts have helped fund this opportunity and may encourage students to choose childhood cancer research as a specialty.

This grant funds a student to complete work in pediatric oncology research for the summer. Osteosarcoma (OS) is the most common and highly lethal bone cancer affecting children and adolescent populations. New therapies are desperately needed for this highly aggressive disease, as outcome for metastatic OS has not improved over the past few decades despite the utilization of aggressive combination chemotherapy. The summer fellow will focus on testing a novel CA-IX small molecule inhibitor using syngeneic OS tumors in vitro and in vivo. Activities generated through this Summer Fellowship grant will lay the foundation for pre-clinical data for the use of CA-IX inhibitor in future clinical trials.

This grant funds two undergraduate students to complete work in pediatric oncology research for the summer. Tumors have extensive mutations in their DNA which play important roles in cancer development. Particular mutations that are frequently found in tumors are likely important for promoting cancer development. BubR1 is a protein that regulates the proper separation of DNA during cell division, and therefore plays an important role in suppressing cancer formation. A mutation in BubR1 (R249Q) is specifically observed in approximately 15% of pediatric cancers and is not found in adult cancers. Researchers will study this mutation and results may identify a unique mechanism of tumor development controlled by BubR1 specifically during developmental processes, uniquely promoting pediatric cancer. This project will provide an opportunity for these two students to spend the summer performing biomedical science research utilizing well-established and easy to learn techniques, to enhance their excitement in pediatric cancer research.

This grant funds an undergraduate student to complete work in pediatric oncology research for the summer. Ewing sarcoma is a cancer that primarily occurs in children, adolescents, and young adults. While we don't know why certain people get Ewing sarcoma, we do know that most patients have the same problem with genes in their cancer cell. Just as genes affect your eye color, the Ewing sarcoma cells have a special gene, EWS-FLI1, that keeps the cancer growing. EWS-FLI1 is critical for Ewing sarcoma cells to survive. If you turn off EWS-FLI1, Ewing sarcoma cells die. This project will study exactly how YK-4-279, a chemical in a new drug in clinical trials, affects key survival processes, called transcription and splicing, to enable design of optimized drugs. This grant is named for the St. Baldrick's Foundation Staff whose generous gifts have helped fund this opportunity and may encourage students to choose childhood cancer research as a specialty.